


Toon Tower: Curiosity

by Elcee the Porcupine (LC_Rodriguez)



Series: Toon Tower [1]
Category: Regular Show, Steven Universe (Cartoon), The Amazing World of Gumball
Genre: Crossover, Fantasy, Gen, Illustrated, Metafiction, Surrealism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-03-10 08:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3283376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LC_Rodriguez/pseuds/Elcee%20the%20Porcupine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an old, strange tower in another realm beyond imagination, Steven Universe learns what it's like to truly fear the unknown, as well as to marvel at the mysterious. Most of all, he is not alone. In this first installment of a three-part series, a strange land invites beings from different universes to seize the day, and discover something fantastic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wonder

"Carpe Diem, quam minimum credula postero!"

 

# 

##  [Part 1: Curiosity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKi9Z-f6qX4)

There is now a portal in the 32nd floor of the tower. This portal is a circular anomaly that spins slowly in a spiral motion, sort of like a black hole. A black and white hole, to be precise, as pure white and black streaks paint its spiral in a hypnotic fashion. What's truly strange about this portal is that is has no edges and no third axis. The white and black streaks seem to blend into reality, and its lack of a third dimension means that the portal turns practically invisible when viewed to the side, and you can never tell if the center is too close or too far. The portal is extremely difficult to perceive, let alone comprehend.

What is this strange portal's function? It allows the direct transportation from the tower to entirely different universes that share a link to it. What allows this portal to be used effectively by living beings in and out comes in the form of two single, yet very significant words: curiosity and desire. Wonder and want.

Voices can now be heard from within this one portal. Those are the voices of the inhabitants of the universe that this tower is currently communicating with, specifically the state of Delmarva, US, in its own Earth. The voices sound baffled; questioning, speculating, and mocking the portal's presence in their world. A smaller voice loudly describes the portal as 'awesome' and 'cool', wishing to know its purpose, a perfect demonstration of the necessary sense of curiosity for the portal to work. The confused voices turn into frantic shouts as the portal reacts to the small voice's body, preparing to pull it into the tower. The small voice does not even get a chance to scream as he is dragged in, disappearing out of his universe and into the tower.

In the tower enters Steven Universe.

He falls to the floor, somewhat dazed from the impact, unaware of what just happened to him at first. Then, his eyes open, and sees the run-down room he just fell into, damaged due to years of abandonment. The weak LED lights flicker a vain attempt to illuminate the battered large room, a regular door in the right corner half-opened to barely reveal the hall beyond it. Steven stammers as he stares at the room's terrible state, finding it to be a grim place. His face begins to sweat as he scrambles to his feet and tries to get back into the portal.

The power goes out. The portal disappears. You see, even portals require an electrical source of energy. Steven is now stuck in an old dark tower without the Crystal Gems to help him. His heart races and his breathing is more rapid. He sweats more profusely as he is consumed by dread.

"W-w-well..." he struggles to say to himself. "I guess I'll just...gotta find my own way out...huh?"

Steven crawls to the floor trying to feel his way in the darkness. The room looks even grimmer than before. The thought that something could lurk in the shadows and the Gems aren't there by his side added to his overwhelming dread as he frantically crawls through the floor trying to find something. Luckily, at a corner he finds a strong flashlight just conveniently left in the room and coincidentally possessing working batteries, and his fear temporarily eases. He picks it up and laughs a little as he proceeds to try to turn it on. Then the door leading to the hall slowly creaks wide open, and Steven is still as he stands right in front of it. Dirty windows to the right dimly illuminate the hall, allowing Steven to see it more clearly.

He sees a figure just at the end of the hallway.

He grits his teeth not to scream, but Steven's heart now beats faster and he continues to breathe heavily through his nose as he stares at the silhouetted thing standing at the end of the hall, its bright eyes staring back at him, fixated, and still. Lingering seconds pass between stares as Steven begins to calm down. He notices that the creature doesn't seem all that threating to him. Its eyes did not express hostility so much as they expressed fear, and he can subtly hear the fearful breathing from it. It almost looks scared too.

Steven finally decides to move. He sighs and steps forward. Suddenly, the creature hunches over, its pupils shrink, and sprints away behind the wall to the left of the hall.

"Wait!" he cries out, but the creature is now long past gone. Indeed, he’s not alone.

Steven sighs deeply again and turns on the flashlight. It brightly illuminates the worn wallpaper and the dusty floor, highlighting the state of disrepair that matches that of the entire tower. With finger and thumb on his chin, he slowly makes his way out of the room.

“I guess I better go find that thing,” he spoke to himself, trying to break the dreadful silence with the sound of his own voice.

Walking slowly down the hall he looks to his right and sees the filthy windows, so unclean he can’t actually see what lies outside. He can only guess that it is daytime, and possibly cloudy. He looks to his left and sees an old wooden door. He’s tempted to open it, but that is not his main concern at the moment. He can faintly hear some wind from behind the door, and he could see some light from underneath it. He ignores it and continues to walk.

At the end of the hall, Steven turns left. He travels yet another hall, the same to the one he just passed. So alike to the one behind him, that Steven has to look back to make sure he didn’t simply imagine having left the room. He gulps as he continued to see the same sights as before. He turns left. Another hall, the same as before. But this time, right in front of him, he sees a deep, dark corner housing strange elevator doors. Steven decides to ignore it, already unsettled by everything else.

He turns left, same as the second hall.

This can’t be right, Steven thinks. He’s just traveled left in three directions, yet he isn’t travelling in a circle. He isn’t ending up where he started, yet the halls remain seemingly unchanged each time he turns left. Disturbed, Steven stops. He sweats as he ponders if he should turn around, back to where he came, back to the room. Perhaps the portal may return and take him back to Beach City, leaving the dreaded tower and never wanting to remember it again. But he isn’t sure if the portal was ever going to return. At least not until he finds out what is going on. He has to understand where he is and what is happening if he wants to go home, he figures. He assures himself that he can defend himself if something happens, with or without the Gems. With a deep sigh, he presses on.

He doesn’t remember how long he is walking. He stops paying attention to his surroundings because of the near-endless repetition. He had practically memorized the pattern of the seemingly never-ending path: hall, hall, elevator, and hall; hall, hall, elevator, and hall, and so on. He is no longer afraid or disturbed, but bored from the unchanging environment, his heart no longer beating as quickly. He could just take a nap right there, if Steven didn’t find it to be unwise.

But around the 16th floor, Steven finally notices something different in the left wall. Something that breaks the pattern at last. He stops dead in his tracks, surprised at the change. His boredom fades as he shines his flashlight at a partly-open door that leads to a dark room, the only light coming from yet another door at the end of the room, but still too dark. Steven pushes the creaky door and steps in.

Inside, many old papers float through the breeze of the door opening. The dark room is nothing but papers and books, every one of them blank, as Steven finds. He walks inside the room shines his flashlight through the papers on the floor and the pile of books, figuring them to be perfect hiding places for the creature he saw. As he reaches the middle of the room, Steven suddenly notices that his footsteps sound different. He points his flashlight down and kicks away the old papers obscuring the floor, and finds himself waking on _another_ door fixed to the floor. Steven quickly steps back in surprise, then points his flashlight upwards to find _yet another_ door fixed to the ceiling. Two doors to the walls, two doors to the floor and ceiling. Four doors in each room. Doors everywhere.

Steven tries to leave, but notices a piece of yellowish paper on the floor standing out from the others. It is not damaged or broken or even dusty like everything else, and most of all, it wasn’t blank. Puzzled, Steven walks over to it and picks it up. He gasps and his eyes widen. It is a map of the tower.

Steven excitedly reads it, his fear subsiding, and soon realizes how truly amazing and mysterious the tower really is. All those doors to left of the halls lead to various rooms, most of them adjacent to each other through three more doors; one in the wall leading to the room behind it, the other two leading to rooms above and beneath. Steven finds the idea positively fun, but he can’t quite make out what exactly the rooms themselves are for. All the rooms clearly have a function, but he can’t make out the interiors, as if someone had scribbled all over them. The only rooms that aren’t scribbled is the Portal Room where Steven entered the tower, and the room where he is now, labeled the Study Room. Steven soon regrets not having opened those doors.

Steven is also compelled to jump in relief as the map finally shows him the secret behind the endless path. The tower doesn’t have stairs, rather, long slopes that circulate around the rooms. The hall that Steven walked through the entire time was a slope designed at an angle that whoever walks across it doesn’t realize they are going down; the windows and doors align across the slope to give it the impression that the hall is a horizontal line. Steven stares at the map in both amazement and unsettlement at the mind game the tower’s design had played on him, but he still doesn’t know what the strange elevator is for. He doesn’t see it anywhere on the map.

As he looks down at the map further, he notices that the tower from the 8th floor down looks relatively normal, almost like a large lobby to an apartment building or a hotel, like he saw on commercials. It has a kitchen, a dining hall, restrooms, and an actual entrance. At least, it looked normal, as apartment buildings typically don’t have four towering support beams holding up the rooms. Like a hotel, the second to eight floors contain guest rooms, far more normal than the map showed him.

Finally, the bottom of the paper read faintly: _Toon Tower Resort Magic Map_.

“Oh, that’s cool!”

A voice on his shoulder. The fear is back.

He swiftly swings his flashlight at the source of the voice.

They both scream.

Steven tumbles to the floor in terror as the creature attempts to scurry away. As Steven coughs the dust and crawls to his fallen flashlight, his terrified mind starts to recall what he just saw. That _thing_ was _right_ on his face. It was _watching_ him read. It was _right next to him_. He grabs the flashlight and points it to the fleeing creature. That thing…

The light shines on the creature fully. Steven can only stare in confusion at the giant blue cat before him. Aside from his head being larger than his body in proportion, the cat has clearly humanoid anatomy; he is wearing a tan sweater and grey pants, hunched over in two legs, and has a balloon-like tail on his rear. While Steven is simply uncomfortable, the cat stares in fear at the light with his pupils shrunken, and quiet squeaks emit from his mouth. Relaxing, Steven slowly gets up, but the cat starts to bolt behind the door to the hall.

Steven shouts. “H-hey! Don't be scared! I'm-I'm just as scared as you are! I'm scared too...Let me see you. Maybe we can help each other.” Steven calmly holds out his hand towards the scared cat. Still hunching over, never taking his eyes off Steven, the cat slowly steps back into the room. Seeing Steven’s friendlier stance, he breathes through his nose and starts to stand up straight. His ears perk upward. His eyebrows begin to relax, though they soon curl into a look of bafflement. He tilts his large head.

Then he opens his mouth.

“…You… speak English?!?? What are even the odds, man??”

 


	2. Companionship

The loudness in his voice is almost grating to Steven, and downright startling to hear it come from a big cat. He puts his hand down and shouts again.

“H-hey! You can t-talk?” Steven responds. “ _And_ you speak English too??”

“Oh, Pffffffft,” mocks the cat. “I get it, I get it. I,” he gestures himself, “wear clothes, I stand on two legs, and the fact that I can _talk_ is what bothers you?”

Steven starts to sweat in both fear and embarrassment. “Y-you’re blue too!” he blurts out. The cat raises his eyebrow suspiciously, and Steven gulps. “I-I didn’t mean to offend you, I just… I’ve never seen anything like you before…”

The cat chuckles to himself while Steven stares in confusion. “I was just joking, dude.”

Steven is left speechless, and hopelessly uncomfortable. He thinks to himself, how is he supposed to respond? What could he possibly say? Is he supposed to laugh? He can’t bring himself to even smile, something that he once thought would never occur until now. The chuckling cat notices that Steven isn’t laughing, and he himself is doing a poor attempt at making light of his uncomfortable situation. He slowly stops laughing, leaving the two of them in an awkward silence.

The cat clears his throat. “I’m… Gumball Watterson,” he breaks the silence. “Seriously though, _what_ are you? I’ve never seen anything like you before either, and I’ve seen a lot.”

“Oh!” Steven finally responds to the question, and decides to joke around as well. He puts his wrists on his side and puffs up his chest, trying to look heroic, and states confidently “I’m Steven Universe, and I’m a Crystal Gem!”

Gumball, however, is perplexed. “…Oookay…” he says after another short period of silence, “I have no idea what the heck you’re talking about, but okay…” Steven slumps in disappointment.

It’s a baffling occurrence that neither of them manage to make each other laugh, despite being able to do so to other people in their world so many times. When someone comes from a place far beyond what’s familiar to the recipient, any attempts at coping humor towards them are rendered useless, as the recipient is less amused and more scared of them to the point of crippling fear. Steven and Gumball learn this the hard way.

It is now at this point that Steven decides they need to fix the mess that they’re both in.

“Gumball! …right?” Steven begins to ask. “Do you have any idea what happened to us?”

Gumball turns around and thinks for a few moments before responding. “Well… uh… I guess…” he turns to Steven, “Did you come from a swirly thing?”

Steven tilts his head and recalls how he came. “Y-yeah, I came from a swirly thing!”

“You too?” Gumball hums to himself, trying to make sense of their dilemma the best he can. “That swirly thing is called a portal, or something. I don’t remember anything else about it, but it’s not gonna show up again ‘til the lights come back. Turns out it’s powered by… electricity?” Gumball starts looking around on the floor, not thinking about borrowing Steven’s flashlight. “I read it in a paper here, but now I can’t find it.”

Curiously, Steven reaches to the map again, and takes a closer look at its backside. Indeed it contains critical information about the portals. Funny, he doesn’t remember ever seeing that information when he first picked up the paper. Gumball sees the paper in Steven’s hands and runs over to him. He once again reads from Steven’s shoulder.

“ _Welcome, dear Toon visitor! You have been transported to this marvelous resort by state-of-the-art, electrical multiversal magic known as PORTALS! But what are PORTALS? PORTALS are circular anomalies […]_ ”

They read about the definition of portals. They read about the portal’s functions. They read about the electric energy portals require. They read about the multiversal qualities of the portals. They read about the portals’ connections to different universes.

They realize they are so disturbed with each other because they come from different universes. And along with it, all the different science and magic; the different physics, biology, and most of all, different likenesses.

They are silent and nervous. They slowly turn their heads to each other, stepping back slightly. They are tense and repulsed as they inspect their extraterrestrial skin, hair, and every other part of each other’s bodies. One thing is certain; their consciousness are similar, as they mirror each other’s movements as they inspect. Both of them have the simultaneous urge to poke each other, just to know what different textures from different realities are like. They slowly reach each other; right hand to left hand and vice versa. But they pull back, at the same time. They try again; right hand to left hand. They manage to touch their fingertips. They immediately pull back and inspect their own fingertips for any abnormalities, recalling how weird it felt. They both let out a deep sigh, deciding that neither of them are toxic.

After another period of silence, Steven starts to question again. This time, loud enough for Gumball to be taken aback. “But then why were we brought here? Why did the portals just open? Why were we taken here?”

"…S-sheesh, man. I don't know," Gumball shrugs casually, "I'm just a cat."

Steven hums. “Well, whatever reason we were brought here, we should probably find out how we can get home first.”

Gumball laughs half-mockingly. “ _First_ , Steven? Look, I’ll be honest, I don’t think fate works the same way here as it does on my world. I am NOT stickin’ around unlike you!” He starts to sound more agitated, “There is no reason, for me to be here! All I want is to get home, and that’s final!”

It is now Steven’s turn to be taken aback. He only met him for a few minutes and even he believes this attitude is somewhat unexpected of him, due to his judge of character. He isn’t like this most of the time, he believes, he’s just stressed. Steven starts to ponder for several minutes, studying the map further in order to look for something, humming all the while. Gumball frowns and impatiently taps the floor with his foot. As he studies the map, Steven notices another room underneath the lobby –a basement–.

“Okay! I’ve got a plan! See this?” he shows the map to Gumball, pointing towards the lobby, then the basement. “We just have to go here and power up this thing! Then the portals will come back and we can go home!”

Gumball stares at the map, and his eyes light up for the first time. He smiles sincerely, and goofily, without any hint of mockery, and he squeaks joyfully as he scans the map. Steven looks warmly at Gumball’s joyous expression. Steven doesn’t want to admit it, but his _curiosity_ slowly replaced his fear, and he wishes to know more secrets about this strange tower, especially upon seeing the map. But Gumball doesn’t feel the same; he’s stuck in an unfamiliar place and he desperately wants to get out. Steven decides that going home was the best for him, and the adventure could wait. He’s gonna do it for his new friend.

“Well, then what are we waiting for?!” Gumball exclaims and throws the map at Steven, “Let’s go!”

They shake hands with confidence, no longer agitated by the extraterrestrial textures of their hands. It is a fact that companionship is necessary in stressful and solitary environments; a half-Gem boy and a talking blue cat are no exception. More comfortable with each other, they hurriedly set off. They just needed to go further down, power up the generator, and go back up to the Portal Room, as the map specifies. How hard could it be?

They exit the room through the door to the path, and continue to quickly travel down the hall to reach the lobby. Steven observes Gumball’s remarkable speed, and soon finds himself struggling to keep up with him, his cries to wait up ignored on feline ears. Maybe that’s how he reached the 16th floor so quickly.

Steven turns left, and finds Gumball standing in front of the creepy elevator corner. Gumball can hardly believe he hasn’t noticed the elevator in all the other floors until now; he moved so quickly he didn’t see the corner. Steven walks towards Gumball at the corner. He looks at him, and the light on his eyes is gone, along with his joy. Gumball is afraid once again.

 “Let’s… not take the elevator,” he stutters.

Steven tries to offer a rational explanation. “It probably doesn’t work, anyway.”

“No, man. It…” Gumball shudders, “It gives me the creeps. Like, even more than anything else here. It’s just bad.”

Steven stares at the elevator suspiciously, until he too feels a sense of dread towards it. With the rest of the tower’s damaged state, Steven believes the elevator to be completely unsafe to use, and he mentally beats himself up for even thinking about going near it. Gumball, however, is more bothered by it for different reasons, mainly the fear of paranormal happenings within the shaft. He’s been attacked by malevolent ghosts too many times.

“Okay,” Steven explains, “let’s just ignore it and move on, alright? We’re not gonna use it.”

Gumball turns to him. He closes his eyes and he swallows. “Okay.”

They press on further into the hall. Gumball decides that he feels safer by Steven’s side, so he slows down his pace to allow Steven to catch up. As touched on before, companion is necessary in stressful environments. They silently walk throughout the unchanging halls, getting closer and closer to the lobby.

Steven decides to discover a little more about Gumball. “So, you’re a talking cat, what do you want to do --?”

“I’m going home,” says Gumball firmly, not even letting Steven finish. With his single encounter with the elevator, Gumball is stressful again. He can only think about powering up the portals again and that’s it.

“No I meant… do you have like, a mission or something, like me? I’m going to defend the universe!”

Gumball stares at him. "A mission?" he hesitates for a moment, "...W-well, same as you, I guess. Trying to find the secrets of the universe…" he hesitates more, “well it’s not really a mission, it just happens. I just do my own thing. I actually live a pretty normal life, when this stuff doesn’t find me. I go to school, I play, I date, I get chased by T. Rexes…”

As Gumball continues to list his daily activities, Steven alternates between excitement and utter bafflement. He let the weirdness slide however, as Gumball continues to describe his countless misadventures, admiring his strange and wonderful life. He can’t help but compliment. “Wow, your life sounds so amazing!”

Surprised, Gumball stops in his tracks and faces Steven. He opens his mouth to say something, but no words come out. He just chuckles, flattered and delighted. This guy is seriously starting to make his day. Just hanging out with him makes things better already. He reminds him of Darwin, somewhat.

They finally reach the very end of the hall, a single door standing right in front of them, presumably leading to one of the one of the floors of the lobby, along with the guest rooms. They both pause, look at each other, and Steven steps up to open it. As they step outside the door and into the lobby, both of them suddenly feel like they’ve walked into a different building altogether. They step into one of the long balconies with dusty red carpets, passing by some guest rooms with golden numbers engraved in the darker wooden doors, tilted and broken to reveal the whitened empty room. The remaining essence of luxury is washed away by disrepair, but Steven and Gumball’s attention focused on the empty main lobby and leaned against the steel handrails.

They stare at the vast rubble of what remains of the lobby, illuminated by a skylight at the topmost of the tower. Hundreds of huge, destroyed concrete pieces, including what remains of the support beams that held up the series of strange rooms above. The entire broken state leaves the whole lobby and the guest rooms in a post-apocalyptic feel, punctuated by the gray, cloudy sky that illuminates it. Steven has a nauseous tingle in his stomach as he questions to himself just how sturdy the room and its door on the floor was when he stood above it. Disconcerted, they both began to make their way to the basement treading alongside the rest of the balcony, passing by several rooms.

“What about you, then?” Gumball brings him out of his thoughts as they walk. “What’s YOUR world like? Are you a superhero or something?”

Steven has no idea what to say. After hearing the near-incomprehensible “adventures” that Gumball faces daily, it’s difficult to compete. Gumball has practically seen everything, what could he say that he doesn’t already somewhat know? Regardless, he begins to explain his life story from the beginning. Something he would quickly regret.

“U-uh WHAT?? You’re your own MOM???!” Gumball shouts madly as they travel down the first stairs they’ve seen since entering the tower. Had it not for him grabbing the railings as he reeled back, he would have fallen the entire flight of stairs.

“It’s a-it’s… complicated!” Steven stammers embarrassingly before he continues calmly. “Anyway, now it’s just me and the Crystal Gems. It’s pretty simple; me, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl go on missions, we do really cool stuff, we beat monsters, and collect their gems to keep them safe (we don’t really kill the monsters).” They continued to descend the flight of stairs, passing and going down the floors. Steven tells Gumball the details of his own adventures with the Crystal Gems, as well as the happenings in Beach City

Gumball also becomes fascinated with Steven’s heroics and thrills. Unfortunately he can detect within himself a small, yet significant hint of envy for Steven’s strength and bravery against almost all odds, and the fact that he lives in a place so cozy and quiet compared to the daily chaos that is Elmore. But he tries to push those thoughts aside, and instead compliments him. He wants to be nicer to strangers this time around, especially when they’re not from Elmore. “Man, your life sounds so…” Gumball struggles to find the words. “…epic!”

“Ah, ha, ha!” flattered, Steven dons his usual chuckle. “Thank you!”

They make their way down the stairs into the main lobby. They decide not to explore it for the time being, but Steven glances at the shattered front entrance and the gray light outside. He could exit the building and find out what’s out there, but he needs to help his friend, who’s stressed out enough already. He moves forward before Gumball could get impatient again. They descend the next flight of stairs.

The stairs leading to the basement are pitch-black, far darker than the Study Room. Not even Steven’s flashlight can illuminate the darkness fully; all they see is stairs and a blackened void. Steven gulps, and Gumball, in his somewhat paranoid state, half expects a ghostly face to appear and devour them. What they find instead is yet another door at the end. A metal one with a lock that’s been picked with a quill that lies on the floor. He’s getting pretty darn sick of doors.

Steven pushes the unlocked door open, and stare at some sort of concrete cave. The cave that is the basement. And right at the end, is the generator.


	3. Chasm

Gumball stares at the generator, his one ticket to returning to Elmore back to his home, while Steven curiously shines the basement’s walls. As they both walk towards the generator, Steven observes the strange symbols drawn on the walls; drawings of various bizzare creatures, some with multiple limbs, so as to illustrate movement. He wonders if these drawings have any meaning to them, and who could have drawn them. Gumball loudly taps the metal box, whose clanks bring Steven’s attention.

“Hey!” Gumball calls out irritatingly as he stands in front of the generator’s door. “Can you point your flashlight _this_ way, please?”

Steven shines his flashlight at the generator, and Gumball finds the door opening the inner mechanism of the generator. He pulls hard and manages to open it slightly. A yellow warning sign of high voltage that is imprinted to the door fades out of sight as Gumball opens the door wider.

“Wait,” Steven asks. “Should we even be doing this? This doesn’t look safe, we should go and get help…”

Gumball turns to him with a look of annoyance. “We’re _alone_ , Steven,” Gumball states. “There IS no help. We’re the only ones around to fix this! We’re just gonna have to _try_ to do this ourselves.”

“But,” Steven sighs. “What about those things, then?” Steven flicks his wrist to illuminate the drawings, turning the light away from the generator. Gumball growls at having his light taken away. He couldn’t care less about what was in the walls at the moment. He turns towards Steven in anger, only giving the walls a quick glance.

“Maybe they left, then.” Gumball says sternly. “There’s no one here. _Light, please_.”

Steven disappointingly shines the flashlight back at the generator. Gumball peeks inside without saying anything else, and Steven looks away from him silently concerned: the drawings look too new compared to the rest of the tower, so someone obviously had been in the basement recently. He knows that, somehow, they aren’t alone.

Gumball stares at the inside wiring of the silent generator, unsure if there is something actually wrong. He hums and licks his lips, and reaches towards the loose wiring, hoping to do something. Steven turns to him just in time to realize that –in trademark fashion– Gumball is about to do something stupid.

“Whoa, please be careful!” Steven warns him. Gumball just smiles.

“Don’t worry,” Gumball states in confidence. “I’ll be just fine.”

He grabs the wiring and tugs on it. Tons of electric circuits pump voltage into his arm and the rest of his body. He squeals loudly in pain as he lights up like a lightbulb and convulses erratically. Steven covers his ears and stares in horror at what is happening to Gumball, and swears he could see his skeleton. The lights in the basement start to flicker.

The power comes back. The portals appear.

Gumball lets go of the wiring and falls stiff to the floor, his fur and clothes blackened and singed. Steven stares at Gumball’s unconscious body, shaking and breathing rapidly in shock as if he were electrocuted as well.

Then, Gumball happily sits up.

“Yeah!!” he yells. “The power’s back! Wooo!!!” He gets to his feet and starts to laugh and dance in joy, and grabs Steven’s face. “Steven, the power’s back! Yeah!”

Unfortunately, Steven is even more disturbed than before. Once Gumball lets go of his face and continues to dance, Steven feels as if he’s talking to a corpse of his friend, and he feels his heart trying to tear out of his chest. He quickly swallows and holds his head with his palm, trying to think again.

“But…h-how…?” Steven struggles to ask. “How, uh… How are you not dead???”

“C’mon, I said I’d be fine!” Gumball laughs and bolts upstairs. “Now c’mon we’re goin’ home!”

Gumball disappears quickly, leaving Steven to try to recall what happened. Gumball’s tampering must have kick started the machine and got it to work again, somehow. Steven is sure that the electric generators in his universe wouldn’t work like that, even if magic were involved. The generator in this tower seems to work in some sort of abstract logic –cartoon logic, if you will. After several more seconds of heavy breathing, Steven gets over his shock and swallows again.

“H-hey, Gumball!” he shouts. “Wait for me!”

As Steven starts to run out of the room, he can hear a faint rattling sound from behind the generator.

Steven once again finds it hard to keep up with Gumball, not just because he keeps getting distracted by the newly-lit ruins of the tower (in what little it has of lights), but because Gumball is going even faster than before. By the time Steven exits the basement, Gumball already enters the hallways above the lobby. He runs upstairs as fast as he can, stopping at the top to catch his breath before running again. When he enters the hallways, he quickly realizes how difficult it is running up an inclination and almost finds himself out of breath again.

Gumball is also starting to get tired, and slows down his pace. Normally, he would give up and collapse on the floor, lamenting of how tired he is. Not this time, he decides. He is going home and that’s final, _then_ he can complain about how tired he is. He starts to jog determinably, sweating and huffing through his mouth. In spite of the dryness in his mouth, he turns right and he starts to chant to himself: _I can do this, I can do this, I’m almost home, I can do this, I ca_ —

He stops. Emerging from behind the wall at the right is a ferocious-looking animal, staring straight at him with ominous glowing eyes.

“…Can’t do this.”

He turns around and bolts down the hall, screaming in fear. In seconds, he turns left and passes by Steven. Confused, Steven runs ahead to find what Gumball had been so scared of. He turns right. At the end of the hall, the animal trots forward. The animal looks at him and chuffs, and Steven lets out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, Lion!” Steven giggles as he goes to greet his beloved pet. “It’s so good to see you!”

Just as Steven goes to hug him, a strange orange creature pops out of Lion’s mane on his back.

“Hello!” it chirps.

“Wha-a…?!” Steven stops dead in his tracks, and his smile quickly twists into a look of complete befuddlement. What is _that_ on Lion’s _back_?? _A fish with legs_???

“So…” the fish asks sheepishly. “You… didn’t happen to see a cat running by here, did you?”

“Uh…” Steven can’t bring himself to answer. He simply points to Gumball’s direction with his thumb.

“Okay! Thank you!” says the fish happily, and Lion proceeds to run past Steven straight to where Gumball went. Steven’s eyes remain glued to the fish behind Lion’s back as he runs down the hall and turns left. Even once he’s out of sight, Steven practically forgets what he is doing as his mind tries to deduce what that thing was. Was that the friend that Gumball was talking about in his adventures? Was that who he called Darwin?

“Yo! Steven! You there?” A voice snaps Steven out of his uneasiness. He can recognize that voice anywhere. He beams and runs up the hall. He turns right.

“Amethyst!”

“Heyyyy!” she shouts from the end of the hall. “What’s up, lil’ man!”

Steven runs up to her. Amethyst whoops and extends her hand to high-five him. Their hands slap, and they proceed to greet and laugh at each other. Steven then looks to her for answers.

“What was going on there?” asks Steven. Amethyst knows what he is referring to.

“Aughhh,” she huffs. “It’s crazy. After the swirly thing showed up again, Lion went in first, so I got curious. When I got in, there was this giant fish. And it was… talking to Lion? Anyway, he got on Lion’s back to… find someone, I think he said. Fish riding a cat.” She scratches her butt cheek as Steven fails to respond. “Yeah it was… it was weird.”

Steven turns around and looks where Lion and the strange fish went, his curiosity emerging once more. He wonders if he should really meet these new beings, but he knows that he really wants to see more.

Amethyst sighs and rolls her eyes. “But now Pearl and Garnet can’t enter, so they wanted me to fetch you,” she crosses her arms and puffs. “Guess that means it’s time to get back. This place stinks anyway, c’mon, go get Lion and let’s go.”

“Wait…” Steven says honestly. “Actually, um… Amethyst?”

Amethyst stops to listen to him curiously. “What?”

“I don’t think I wanna leave just yet,” he says. “I kinda just… wanna explore. I know this place doesn’t look good, but I bet that I can really find some neat things here! During my time here, I got to see a lot of things, and I wanna find out more.” Steven pauses and thinks. “But at the very least, I wanna say goodbye to these new people.” He turns to Amethyst pleadingly. “Can I stay for a while longer?”

Amethyst raises her eyebrow. As far as she knows, Steven wasn’t gone _that_ long ago. As usual, she shrugs it off. She simply concentrates on what Steven says about the place and starts to look around. She stares at the grimy window and squints. After pondering quite loudly, she begins to nod. She turns to him with a determined smile as she is also overcome with curiosity.

“I got a better idea,” she says confidently. “Why don’t we get the other Gems to come here? We can all go exploring together. Yeah, let’s see if we can sway them for once! We’ll show ‘em how to have fun!”

Steven’s eyes light up. The very thought of the Crystal Gems having fun with him in other worlds, something he’s been dreaming about for a long time, is capable of erasing any negative feelings. He whoops and laughs, and shouts loud exclaims of “YAY!!!”

Amethyst chortles on her own and high-fives Steven again, and they both set out for the Portal Room to find the other Crystal Gems. The run up and turn right, unaware of the figures in that hall’s elevator corner. They reel back and watch them run, and whisper to each other.

“It’s okay, dudes, I don’t think they noticed us.”

“Man, that hair is just insane! Am I right, guys?”

“You two really should keep quiet.”

“My, I simply can’t wait to see all the strange little things in this quite peculiar building!”

Gumball lies on the hall collapsed face-first in a puddle of his own terrified sweat, panting heavily. _I’m so tired I’m so tired_ , he repeats in a wheezing breath. Once Lion turns left to find Gumball, he stops approaching him and stands still at the end of the hall, so as to not scare him to death. Worried, Darwin dismounts Lion to run to Gumball himself, allowing Lion to wonder up the halls. Darwin kneels in front of his exhausted friend, and reaches a fin to pet his fur.

“Hey Gumball, are you okay?” he asks gently.

Gumball lets out a muffled “huh?” when he feels the fin in his head. That voice… it can’t be. Gumball throws his head up, his face sweaty and his eyes somewhat bloodshot from exhaustion. Right under his nose, his best friend and brother watches him with a bubbly smile. Gumball screams happily. He jumps up in a burst of complete joy that erases any impurity left in his body.

“BUDDY!!!” he exclaims. Grinning, he throws himself into his brother’s arms and holds his head tightly. Darwin instantly reciprocates. They stand there holding each other affectionately.

“Hahahaha, ohhhhhh!” Gumball murmurs softly. “I missed you so much, buddy!! I thought I’d go crazy!”

“Just thought you might need some rescuing!” Darwin giggles. “And maybe a little bit of company!”

Gumball thinks about that last part for a moment. He actually _did_ have some company; he made a “sort” of a new friend and he enjoyed Steven’s company. Did he betray Darwin? He assures himself that Steven is cool and all, but no one could ever replace Darwin, his dear brother. Gumball lets go of his embrace and grabs Darwin by the cheeks.

“Dude, let’s get home.”

“…Right.” Darwin responds. Truthfully, he is still curious about the place and would like to go exploring, wanting to befriend aliens like he already did with that pink lion, in spite of how disturbed he is. But he’ll respect his brother’s wishes.

“Let’s go!” Gumball announces. He starts running up the hall again as if he never lost energy, and Darwin isn’t too far behind, running at the same pace. Just like old times. Gumball started thinking about Steven again. He would say goodbye to him, but he is in such a hurry to get out. Besides, they are heading the same way, so maybe he can—

He notices something in the corner of his eyes as he turns right one more time. He stops again abruptly, and Darwin barely avoids colliding with him. Before Darwin has a chance to ask what happened, both nervously turn towards the elevator corner. In the elevator corner stood a tall, slender blue bird, a small raccoon, a yeti, and a man with an oversized round head. In the corner, the light inexplicably glows red. The figures don’t notice the brothers as the elevator finally opens its doors.

Darwin almost screams, but Gumball is quick to cover his mouth. For all his bravery in dealing with Lion, he ultimately can’t bring himself to approach these kinds of animals. They both try to step away, until Gumball notices something far more disturbing.

“Wait, dude…!” Gumball begins to exclaim as the figures start making their way inside. “THE ELEVATOR!!! IF THEY TAKE IT THEY’RE DEAD!”

“OH MY GOSH!” Darwin shouts as both their fears take a whole new priority. “CREEPY ELEVATOR! CREEPY ELEVATOR!”

They dash towards the elevator as the doors begin to close, yelling all the way. From the gap of the door, the bird can see weird creatures sprinting right at them.

“What thh—?!”

“HEY!!!!” Gumball grabs the sides of the elevator doors with his claws and opens them, shrinking his pupils, and baring his teeth. “DON’TTAKETHEELEVATOR!!” he yells rapidly.

The elevator’s occupants all recoil and scream in panic. The red light from the corner making Gumball look devilish does not help for them. They scramble to the furthest corners of the elevator, trying to get away from the demon cat and fish, who are currently inside the elevator mashing the button for holding the doors open and flailing their limbs.

“COME ON, GET OUT!!!” they shout, unaware that they are blocking the only exit. Lion sits in the hall, watching all the creatures thrash around in the elevator. He scratches his ear and occasionally glances at the direction of the Portal Room.

“C’mon, Pearl! Don’t you wanna know where I am?”

“No, Steven. I just want you back here! I can’t bear to imagine what sort of eldritch monstrosities beyond even a Gem’s understanding are lurking in there!”

In the Portal Room, Steven talks to the other Crystal Gems from the other side of the portal. Amethyst has her arms crossed and huffs in annoyance.

Both are unaware of yet two more creatures sneaking behind them in the same room, the taller one glowing rather brightly. The taller creature fought the urge not to shapeshift in fear, while the smaller one tries to guide both of them towards the door. They walk slowly, the taller one not taking her eyes off Steven and Amethyst, while the smaller one reaches for the door. She opens it gently and steps outside the Room, signaling the taller one to follow her. She takes her gaze off Steven and Amethyst and tries to step outside.

“Come on, Pearl. It can’t be _that_ hard!” Steven continues to persuade.

“Steven I just…” Pearl sighs. “I don’t want to. I’m sorry.”

Steven starts to pout. He looks at Amethyst, whose arms are crossed. Amethyst shrugs her shoulders. She’s cool with leaving if it doesn’t work out. Steven looks at the portal again and hums to himself.

Steven beams up again and starts to shout into the portal again. “Garnet, are you there?”

Some silence. “Yes, Steven,” Garnet responds.

“Can _you_ come in? Pleeeeaaase? You just need to wonder where I am! Please come in Garnet!” Steven knew Garnet could not resist his pleas. He made sure his voice sounded as tiny as possible to really get to her. Garnet takes a few moments to respond.

“Alright, I’ll try.” she says, ignoring Pearl’s subsequent protests.

Letting out a chuckle in relief, Amethyst glances at the door, but takes back when she sees a yellow glow behind it. In her experiences as a Crystal Gem, something that glows meant something important, or she is simply instinctively drawn to the glow. She remains silent for some time.

“Hey,” she slowly announces as she steps into the door back into the hall. “I’m gonna go check out something. You guys don’t mind right? Nah, you don’t mind.”

The other Crystal Gems don’t hear her, and Steven continues to persuade the other Gems to get in. She exits the room and begins her silent pursuit, following the glow.

The scene in the elevator remains chaotic as Gumball and Darwin continue to hold the doors open. The occupants are significantly less panicked the more but still no less scared, practically at Gumball and Darwin’s mercy. Gumball grows impatient.

“C’mon! Why aren’t you getting out??” he demands. Darwin turns to him in realization.

“Dude, we’re blocking the exit!” he says.

Gumball relaxes his posture, mentally smacking himself. “Oh,” he says embarrassingly and turns their back on them trying to get out of their way, with Darwin following. “Okay. Alright, we’ll just leave you guys to just exit calmly…”

The yeti finally decides to take action, and quickly but gently grabs Gumball by the collar of his sweater and tucks Darwin underneath his other arm, standing between the elevator and the building’s corner. Gumball and Darwin freeze up and stare blankly with eyes wide open, Gumball lifting his knees up and tucking his arms on his chest. All the other figures proceed to quickly exit the elevator, panting heavily.

“A-a-alright, alright,” the bird stammers, pointing to the two brothers. “W-what do we do with ‘em?”

“Let’s dissect them!” the raccoon hollers jokingly. Gumball and Darwin’s pupils are non-existent at this point. The bird glares at the raccoon.

“C’mon, Mordecai! I was just kidding!” the raccoon says in his defense.

“Oh, no! Please don’t harm the poor creatures, Skips!” begs the man. “Can’t you see just how frightened they are?”

On cue, Gumball and Darwin begin to stare at Skips with bright puppy dog eyes.

“Yeah, Pops is kinda right…” Rigby rubs his chin somewhat sarcastically then starts shouting. “Let’s keep ‘em as pets!”

“Rigby, shut up,” Mordecai chastises. He turns to Skips. “Just let ‘em go, alright? They’re not that dangerous.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to do anything.” Skips drops the two brothers from his grasp, and they quickly stand to their feet, somewhat irritated. They do not really appreciate feeling threatened like that. What a bunch of idiots.

“Uh…” Mordecai tries to explain. “I think we… got off to bad start there…”

“It’s alright, we just wanted you to get out of that evil elevator,” Gumball says condescendingly, pointing towards the elevator currently closing its doors in a sinister manner. He begins to make his way towards the Portal Room. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to get back to our _own_ worlds, thanks.”

“You guys stay out of trouble now!” Darwin says in sincerity as he follows Gumball with a smile on his face. They inattentively pass by Lion, who watches them go. He returns his vision towards Mordecai and the others, who stare back in stoic confusion.

“Did we just get talked down to by kids?” Rigby remarks.

“Good thing Benson’s not here,” Mordecai jokes slightly. “Or, we’re definitely not gonna hear the end of it,” he turns to Lion indifferently. “Hey, man.”

Headfirst and soundlessly, Garnet finally manages to get in the tower. Her head turns at various angles, her tryclopian vision scanning and studying the strange new sights, and observing a vast sea of new probabilities from just this one room.

“Weird,” she remarks. “But I’ll get used to it.”

“There!” Steven giggles excitedly, happy to have Garnet with him as well. He turns towards the portal again. “Now you do it, Pearl!”

There is some silence, then, an audible sigh. “Alright, then. I’m coming in. I sure wonder what this portal leads to.”

A foot en pointe emerges from the portal and touches the floor. The rest of the body follows, eyes covered by a single hand. The hand departs, and Pearl lets her eyes stare in slight befuddlement at the room in this unknown dimension, then at Garnet, then at Steven.

“Well…” Pearl tries to comment as she continues to stare. “I can’t say I have ever seen anything like this before. It’s… unique I suppose.”

Steven smiles at her widely and happily, and Pearl can’t help but smile back. Her smile soon fades as she notices something missing.

“Where’s Amethyst?” she asks as her brow starts to furrow.

“Uh…” Steven says confusedly as he begins to look around frantically. “She was just here with me!”

“Ugh! Are you serious? Amethyst!” Pearl passes by Steven and angrily begins to walk towards the door. Steven nervously follows her, and Garnet sighs and moves with them. They exit the room.

“It’s okay, Pearl! There’s no rush!” Steven assures her.

“She could get herself into trouble,” Pearl affirms as they walk down the hall. “I’m not taking any chances. We have to find her before something happens in this crazy place.”

“There is no rush, Pearl,” Garnet states, and they all pause. “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it as a team, but now we need to relax. None of us know this place, so we need to be as calm as possible.”

Steven nods in approval, but Pearl stares at her in a bit of embarrassment. Garnet’s statement didn’t do much to ease her worries, but she’s willing to do as she says. “…Right,” Pearl responds, and they start to walk again. Pearl slows down her pace, letting Steven catch up. He smiles at her reassuringly, and Pearl smiles back, though still feeling unsure.

However, even more uneasy is the glowing creature. She and the smaller one are out of the Portal Room, but she still feels unsafe, still fighting the urge not to shape shift. Her eyes move rapidly and her mouth feels dry. She isn’t used to being in such an alien place. She suspects she’s beginning to get paranoid; she hears footsteps and from the hall in front of them. She stops, listening to her own breath and heartbeat. The smaller one turns to look at her.

“Penny, why are you stopping?” asks the smaller one, disturbed by the alien sights, yet there is no trembling in her straightforward voice. She did a surprisingly good job in maintaining composure.

“Do you hear that, Anais?” Penny asks disconcertedly, looking behind her. “The footsteps on both sides?”

Now that Penny mentions it, she also can hear the footsteps from both sides of the hall, confirming it wasn’t Penny’s paranoia. She doesn’t act scared, but she feels it. Would the crippling thought of being ambushed and killed have something to do with the fact that she’s a rabbit? No, she was certain it was the sheer unfamiliarity. Anais gulps. She stares at the hall in front of her, not daring to go forward, while Penny stares at the hall behind her. Both are rigid and waiting.

Then Anais’s brothers emerge from behind the left wall. She stares in surprise and relief, and her brothers stare back.

“Sis???!” Gumball shouts at her.

“Darwin??? Gumball???” she shouts back.

“What??” Penny turns around alerted upon hearing her lover’s name.

“PENNY?!” Gumball yells even louder staring straight into her form. Gumball’s surprised expression doesn’t change, but Penny begins to smile in relief and affection upon seeing his face. All the feelings of fear are washed away, and her glow begins to blaze brightly in loving joy at him. Gumball tilts his head and smiles caringly, admiring his girlfriend. It was so good to see her again.

Soon, Darwin and Anais start to giggle. Gumball turns his attention towards them, and all three siblings proceed to tackle each other in hugs. Happy and playful giggles from the Watterson kids grow loud throughout the halls, and Penny still stares lovingly at Gumball. Gumball decides to exit the group hug to walk over and embrace his girlfriend tightly. Though slightly taken aback at the sudden hug, she returns it fondly.

A door creaking distracts Amethyst. She stops to look at the barely open door. She looks back at the hall to hear some little voices that also catch her attention, but now her curiosity is pointed towards the door. She decides to look through the door first, then she can see what’s going on behind the left wall. She curiously pushes the door and puts a foot forward. Just a quick look—

There is no floor.

Her startled yelps echo throughout the whole building, far louder than anything else. Everyone stops dead silent. The chats between friends regarding the place and creatures, stopped. The siblings and girlfriend reunion, interrupted. The Crystal Gems’ search for Amethyst, frantic. Lion’s ears and eyes, perked and wide.

Everyone is almost hypnotically drawn to the doors. They soundlessly travel down the vast halls, searching each one they can find.

They open them. They see an empty concrete abyss where the rooms used to be, lightened by the skylight.

Steven and the Crystal Gems stare at Amethyst clinging precariously to the doorknobs, also silent, saved for some anxious panting. They all stare at the vast chasm below.

All senses are numb.


	4. Entrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day.

What follows after Amethyst is able to climb back to the hall is a period of dumbstruck silence among every sentient being in the tower. All the unfamiliarity, and all the disturbed revulsion, drains them of any capability to form coherent thoughts. They can no longer tell the time, they can no longer read or write, they can no longer think rationally and patiently, they can no longer even feel. What remains of their humanity is locked away in their unconscious, and they can only stand blankly, catatonic. They stare with seemingly normal eyes at what they find familiar, reveling their static consciousness in what they already know, not daring to look away into the unknown.

In their catatonic state, it is decided that the Crystal Gems have the most authority among all of them, by being the most powerful. Classic act of nature. None of them spoke, they simply turned to the Gems for some kind of guidance, hesitatingly averting their gaze from their familiar friends. The Gems turn back at them, and change expression for the first time, with that of far greater uncertainty than when Rose Quartz gave her life for her son.

Steven is the first to regain his consciousness and looks to the Gems with a disquieting understanding of what he believes they must do. The other Gems silently agree, despite not knowing what Steven has in mind. They begin to walk down the hall, their footsteps being the only sound, and the other creatures begin to trail behind them, still in their trance. Like shepherds, the Gems lead everyone else down the tower.

They silently head to the lobby, no longer heeding their portals nor their home universes. Even in their hollowed state, they simply want explanations. Steven, understanding this, studies the map further, and pets Lion’s mane as he walks next to him. They exit the halls, and head down the lobby, past the hotel rooms, and walk downstairs to the first floor. Steven looks around the tattered lobby and the map, and points to the back of the building. The ballroom is where Steven decides that they need to go. They follow Steven and head their way towards the back of the tower. They look back to see the still disturbed faces from the other groups, mindlessly following them in search for answers.

Steven then opens the sturdy double doors with a loud creak and he allows everyone to step inside. The ballroom is the room that is the least ravaged of the entire tower. Though the checkerboard carpet is covered with dust, the red curtains are torn, and the wallpaper is slightly ripped, the fancy round tables are still intact, along with its silverware. A podium stands in the other side, the stereo system and microphones steadily prepared and intact. All the groups proceed to sit down on the tables closest to the podium, each table corresponding to their familiar groups.

Once they settle on their own table, all the Gems whisper to each other, listening to Steven’s ideas. Lion lays down in the corner of the podium, waiting patiently for Steven. The others soon begin to wake up. The first thing some of them do after regaining consciousness is to create background noise, to ease any further tension. Mordecai taps the table with his feathered fingers, Rigby taps his own fingers with the wine glass. Anais inspects the contents of a glass, and Darwin looks curiously at the room while swinging his legs.

Gumball kneads his trousers until his claws pull the cloth. Penny looks at him and lets out a forlorn sigh. She reaches towards his shaky hand, and strokes his finger with her own. Warmed by her caring touch, he ever so slightly lifts his hand from his thigh, allowing more of Penny’s fingers to intertwine with his. From there, their hands grasp tightly, ensuring protection and care. With no desires to let go, they embraced their small moment of peace.

Moments still pass as the groups wait to be told what to do about their situation. The Gems then finally whisper to each other, “alright” and they stand up from their table. They head towards the podium, and as everything had already been prepared, they don’t need to do much. They stand in a horizontal line, with Lion in the corner, and with Steven up front and facing the microphone stand. The stand is too tall for him, so he gets on his tiptoes and removes the microphone from it, emitting a loud feedback that seemed to echo throughout the entire room. This catches the audience's attention, and they immediately face the podium. Steven clears his throat nervously as some stage fright kicks in.

“Uh…” Steven speaks over the microphone pressed too close to his face and its cable slightly bent. The loud feedback still lingers in a lower pitch, and the groups cringe. “…I just wanna let you guys know that…um…”

Pearl takes a moment to whisper to Steven to hold the microphone correctly and remind him of his own lines, slightly tugging the cable to straighten it, reducing the feedback.

“Oh! Thank you, Pearl,” Steven quips to her. He turns back at the audience, trying to put on a happy voice. “Ah, as I was saying… I want all of us to understand each other better. What better way for us to get along than by introducing ourselves? We’ll say our names and we’ll tell a little about ourselves so everybody can know who you are! What do you say?”

Nobody responds. They look at each other, still lost and unsure. Gumball sighs, and looks at Steven in disbelief, embarrassed by his overly happy tone. “Dude, what is this? _Kindergarten_?”

Pearl suddenly recoils in horror. “WHAT?!?” Amethyst lets out a very befuddled “Uh?!”

“NO!” Steven yells in assurance. “No, no it’s not!” he laughs nervously. “I-i-i-it’s… nothing like that…”

He stares awkwardly at Gumball, who proceeds to sink under the table in embarrassment and confusion, his siblings and girlfriend stare at him in second-hand embarrassment.

In spite of everything, Amethyst can’t help but chortle. “Ha, ha, haw, jeeeez!”

Steven clears his throat. “Moving on… We’ll start by introducing ourselves!” he says in confidence as he hands the microphone to Garnet.

“We are the Crystal Gems,” she states clearly. “We dedicate ourselves to defend our planet from otherworldy threats.” She prepares a roll-call.

“Garnet.” She tosses the microphone to Amethyst, who proceeds to grin boastfully.

“Amethyst.” She tosses the microphone to Pearl, who barely catches it, leaving her to quickly compose herself.

“Pearl.” Steven quickly grabs the microphone.

“And STEVEN!”

Again, nobody responds, or seems to know how to respond. Their expressions change from that of silent confusion to that of curiosity and slight amazement. They admired the Crystal Gems in a natural manner, subconsciously feeling safe in their presence, understanding why they chose them as leaders in their blank states. Pops begins to clap. “Good show, jolly good show!” The Gems pay little mind to it.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to us!” Steven affirms. “Alright, now I want everybody to introduce themselves. Step up here and tell us a little bit about yourself! You can choose someone to represent your group, you can go up one by one, or you can all step up here together! You can even get a chance to get up close to the Crystal Gems!”

The Crystal Gems reel back in bewilderment. “He must be copying some kind of advertisement…” Pearl whispers.

“Pffft,” Amethyst responds. “Probably.”

“Let’s see…” Steven says. “Who wants to go first? C’mon, don’t be shy!”

Penny smiles, and ushers Gumball from under the table. “C’mon, Gumball, go ahead! It’s going to be alright.” she encourages him.

Gumball lets out an exasperated sigh. “Fine…” He probably wasn’t going home anytime soon, so he might as well go ahead. He crawls away from the table and walks up to the podium, dusting himself off. Lion’s ears twitch and he stands up. He walks over to Gumball and starts sniffing him. Gumball flinches.

“Don’t worry! He won’t bite!” Steven assures, then points to the other Crystal Gems. “They won’t bite either.”

On cue, Amethyst bares her teeth and snaps her mouth shut, growling as she does. Gumball doesn’t find that very funny, but Amethyst continues to smirk teasingly. As Gumball walks towards Steven to grab the microphone, Pearl attempts to study his strange form, periodically looking at him and Garnet. Garnet shrugs at her, not being able to provide an explanation as to what she’s looking at.

Gumball attempts to wipe the microphone’s head with his sweater, recalling how close Steven’s mouth was pressed into it before. “Alright, man,” Gumball speaks over the microphone. “My name’s Gumball. I… don’t really have any extraordinary qualities, let alone have superpowers, but most of the time I just try to do my own thing.” He points to his table and raises his tone. “That _beautiful_ fish over there with the honor of being my best friend and brother, is Darwin!”

“YAY!” Darwin accepts the compliment with absolute glee and stands from his seat. Gumball laughs happily, and Steven can’t help but smile compassionately. Despite being a huge fish with legs, almost everybody in the room find themselves captivated by Darwin’s charm, and the Gems, especially Pearl, observe with interest rather than bewilderment.

“Next up is,” Gumball continues. “Anais, my sister. She’s the smartest one, and we… butt heads sometimes, but she’s pretty cool.”

Anais gives everyone a look of pride. Unsure what to think of her, however, the others start to give her a thumbs-up with small smiles. Pearl begins to wonder about Anais’s claimed title as the smartest. Perhaps she could try to talk to her afterwards.

Gumball then puts on a romantic expression. “And that’s my _girlfriend_ ,” Gumball makes sure to accentuate the word. “Penny. Now SHE’S extraordinary!”

Penny blushes at his compliment, then sees what the others think of her. Everyone stares astonishingly at her bright form, amazed at her radiance and shine. Penny is left feeling extremely bashful, and shape-shifts into a small, red-pink chipmunk covering her eyes with her paws. Everyone stares in awe at her powers, and the Crystal Gems feel as if they are looking at something conspicuously Gem-like, much to their fascination.

Gumball looks at Penny lovingly for a few seconds. “Well,” he says. “Guess that’s everyone there. So now you know, and you’re happy! Now you don’t have to get weirded out by us, but then you’ll find out even _weirder_ things about us! I _could_ tell you where Darwin came from, but that’s another story.”

He laughs at his audience, who chuckle back at him. Then Gumball swiftly turns around to the Crystal Gems scornfully. Pearl stares at him disconcertingly, while Steven’s eyes open wide. Amethyst puffs in amusement, knowing fully what Gumball means.

“Any _other_ words I should be watching out for?” He demands rudely. None of the Gems answer. Gumball rolls his eyes and starts walking off the podium, giving the microphone to Steven, then pats him in his shoulder before leaving to his table, letting Steven know he’s still on good terms with the half-Gem.

“Alright, thanks for stepping up!” Steven tells him, but Gumball doesn’t change his expression as he sits down again. Penny, shifted back to her fairy form, holds his hand affectionately again, Darwin congratulates him and thanks him for the compliments, and Anais gives him a thumbs up. Gumball then smiles again.

Steven speaks through the microphone again. “Who else wants to go?” He points towards Mordecai’s table. “How ‘bout you guys? You’re next!”

Mordecai and the others start muttering to each other quickly. Mordecai stands from his seat. “Alright, we’re going up,” he says. As he begins to exit his table to walk to the podium, he is soon followed by Rigby and Pops, then Skips, deciding to be introduced all at once. Lion gets up again and begins to approach them to sniff them, seizing the opportunity to properly “greet” them.

“How majestic!” Pops praises.

“And tame.” Skips comments intriguingly.

Mordecai and Rigby, based on their experiences with bizzare beasts, are incredibly nervous. When Lion approaches to sniff them, they tense up, and remain stiff. Lion sniffs Mordecai, who begins to shudder and sweat, no longer being as “cool” with Lion as he was when Lion wasn’t so close. Then Lion sees Rigby, and assumes a pouncing position. Rigby gulps loudly.

Steven immediately notices this. “Lion!” he calls frantically and runs to his pet. Lion looks at Steven and sits calmly as Steven starts to pet his mane. Steven turns to the nervous, shuddering Rigby. “Huh, huh! Sorry! He… probably saw you as a toy.”

Rigby goes from nervous to irrationally furious. “A toy???” he shrieks accusingly.

Mordecai puts a hand on his buddy’s shoulder, addressing Steven. “Let’s not set him off,” Mordecai warns gently, with a hint of playfulness in his tone. He grabs the microphone that Steven hands to him and walks over to put it back on the stand, the others moving into position.

Steven looks to the Gems and silently asks for their opinion of these creatures. Pearl has a somewhat disgusted yet confused feelings of them, questioning herself how a bird is able to use its wings like that and the anatomical repercussions of an over-sized head, but Amethyst is signaling something to him. She points to Pearl and Mordecai, then her own face, draws a big triangle over her nose with her finger, and emits a small squawking sound. Steven giggles under his breath while Pearl looks at a grinning Amethyst suspiciously.

Mordecai clears his throat. “Hey, there… kids.” Mordecai suddenly loses some confidence, noticing there is no longer a single adult in the audience. He finds himself wondering why. He also finds himself wondering if he has to take up babysitting.

“Uh…” he continues. “Okay, so I’m Mordecai. I work at a city park. But I like to uh…” he gestures towards Gumball. “What he said, I like to do my own thing too. But I like really old stuff that maybe only your parents know about, so I don’t really know how to…” he makes circling gestures with his wings. “…relate, I guess.”

The kids stare blankly at him, unsure what to say. The Gems are clueless.

“Gimme that!” Rigby shouts as he jumps up to retrieve the microphone from Mordecai’s hands. “Yeah, don’t listen to him, he’s too boring for you. Come hang out with me instead, Rigby! The coolest dude eva!”

Now the kids cringe and turn away, whispering some opinions of disdain and indifference. Pearl also cringes. Skips notices this and casually takes the microphone from Rigby and gives it to Pops.

“Now, now, children,” Pops chirps. “I understand that some of us are not very good role models, but I would also like to get along with everybody! I am Pops, and would love to play games with you all.”

Now the kids are just embarrassed, and look at the whole group with irritated boredom, though they didn’t want to look rude. Skips turns around to look at the similarly unimpressed Crystal Gems, and Amethyst quickly gives him a troubled throat slashing gesture.

He promptly takes the microphone. “Given the circumstances, I suppose I’ll be the one doing the introductions,” Skips explains. “I’m Skips, and I’m in charge of fixing problems most of the time. This is Pops, and he’s the one who brings some morality to our group.” Pops giggles.  Skips takes a long breath before pointing to Mordecai and Rigby. “These are Mordecai and Rigby. They’re best friends, and they don’t really like to work a lot. They mostly do a lot of goofing off.”

“Oh, yeah.” Mordecai remembers, taking the microphone. He announces into the microphone with more confidence. “We just like to party and have fun.  You can joins us in our jams if you like.”

The kids become calmer and more casual. Maybe it won’t be so awkward later. “Okay,” Gumball says.

Mordecai sighs in relief, and silently thanks Skips as he gives the microphone back to Steven. As the group exits the podium, Mordecai and Rigby argue with each other in whispers, exchanging insults somewhere along the lines of a alien kitten being a better stand-up comedian than the other. Steven is hopeful that he’ll get along better with them, but Pearl remains displeased of the two animal creatures. Amethyst is intrigued and interested. “Yeah…” she says. “I think these guys know what I’m talking about!”

Pearl scoffs. She looks to the audience and she finds them with all eyes on the Gems, expecting something else. She bends down next to Steven. “Alright, Steven what’s next?” she asks him kindly, intending for him to answer to the audience.

“Now,” Steven says through the microphone. “We just gotta find something that we can all agree on, so we can get along better! I’ll start with a question: what does everybody think of this place?”

On cue, a chorus of disgusted complains fill the room. Some comments consist of how much the place stinks, how disorganized and chaotic it is, and how just plain creepy its state of disrepair is. Some of them feel angry, others annoyed, and others are simply disconcerted and uncomfortable.

“They don’t like it,” Garnet says.

“Well, then. That’s something…” Steven remarks. “ATTENTION!” He shouts into the microphone. The room is quiet once more.

“Since we all agree that this place isn’t exactly… pleasant, at the moment,” he announces. “I propose that we all work together to restore this building! We wouldn’t want to stay at a place like this, we have to make it better, right?”

Everyone looks at Steven doubtfully, before turning to each other and whispering sternly. The Crystal Gems stare at each other in slight concern. After a minute, Skips directs turns away from his group and addresses Steven.

“Do you want us to stay here?” he asks.

“Well, kind of…” Steven confesses and lowers his head. He knows nobody likes this place, especially not Gumball, who’s been wanting to get out for a long time now. He remains silent, until an idea pops in his mind. “I mean…” he lifts his head, his eyes go bright, and asks solemnly. “How did we come here in the first place?”

No answer. They stare at Steven. Then they turn to each other in thought. They turn their heads and move their eyes to look at the ballroom, at the curtains, at the checkerboard carpet. At the cloudy sky outside. Steven watches the Crystal Gems follow suit.

“We came here because we were curious about this place,” Steven answers himself. “We’ve all been wondering what was in the other side of the portal. We all wanted to see what was going on here. We got scared, we got confused, but really, once you take your time to get to know things… it becomes that more fascinating, right?”

As he spoke, the others stare somberly. They know they are curious, and they know that they want to find out more. Though they were scared before, and are still nervous or uncertain, they know that deep down, they wanted to see more.

“What do you say?” Steven turns to the Gems, then back at the audience. Though he addresses the audience, he looks at Gumball’s direction. “Do you want to stay, for a while?”

Gumball ponders hesitantly. He knows Steven’s statement isn’t just directed at the audience in general. They’ve hung out long enough for him to know what Steven wants since the beginning, despite being against it. True, he _was_ curious of the tower at first, but after staying at a desolate place all alone for a long period of time without any other means to get back home, he began to get stressed. The solitude and the sheer unfamiliarity almost drove him mad, and he remembers having a desperate breakdown shortly before Steven entered.

But Darwin, Anais, and Penny are with him now. Maybe this won’t be so bad now. Maybe, with them around, he can give the place and all the other creatures another chance. He looks at them, and they all look at him. Gumball shifts his gaze back to Steven once more, in an expression of certainty.

“We’re in,” Gumball says with confidence. Steven’s pupils begin to shine stars.

“Oh, then, we’re in, too,” Mordecai says casually. “We wanna see what’s up with this crazy place.”

“We’ll stand by your side, Steven,” Garnet states, rubbing his head, and the other Crystal Gems give him an approving glance. The stars in his eyes grow bigger. The audience awaits eagerly.

Steven shouts his loudest into the microphone. “Here’s the plan, everyone. We’re gonna explore this tower, and we’re gonna fix this tower with _whatever_ we can find!! Then we can go explore some more!! YEAH!!! LET’S GO HAVE FUN!!!”

Whoops and cheers erupt in that corner of the ballroom. High fives are shared between friends and hugs between loved ones. Gumball and Darwin deliver a whoop toward Steven, and Steven whoops back. They all happily get off their tables and begin to exit the ballroom with excitement in their minds, to carry out their plan. All the numb and catatonic fear that was felt before they entered the ballroom doors fade away when they exit, and now curiosity reigns in their collective consciousness, ready to combat their uncertainty.

The Crystal Gems and the employees walk fast towards the hall next to the ballroom in search for tools, while Steven, Lion, and the other the kids dart forward to the entrance of the lobby, to take a look at the strange world below. They will not venture outside the tower, but they decide that they want to catch a small glimpse of the world they're residing in. They run, they scamper, and one of them flies. They don't care about the tower's damage, knowing well that it will not stay damaged for long. Some playful giggles are shared between them.

They stop in front of the shattered entrance, staring at the green field beneath the gray skies.


	5. Rich Doors

 

With the sounds of heavy drills and bangs, the Crystal Gems work on building the Rooms of the tower.

Earlier, they and the park crew had found all the materials they needed in a large storage room at the end of the hall next to the ballroom, including the materials to decorate the rooms. After a period yet more fascination and bewilderment at this strange find, the kids were sought out and then ushered back into the ballroom before they started, and Steven handed in the tower’s map to Pearl. She looked at it in slight disappointment, unsatisfied by the simplistic and incomplete design, but took to observing its possible magical properties. They then began work right away.

First, Skips assisted the Gems in clearing the ravaged lobby, smashing the giant pieces of rubble into smithereens, and having Mordecai, Rigby, and Pops sweep the remains. This allowed them to uncover the withered remains of the support beams. Pearl then drew in minutes a more precise blueprints map of the tower’s structure to compensate for the simple map. As bizarre as they were, Pearl decided that the Rooms needed better, more technical designs so they can be used as easily as possible, while still maintaining their original properties. Their cartoonish properties, if you will.

In addition to fixing the concrete beams, Pearl had planned on creating a cross-section of five rooms for each floor; four rooms facing the doors in the halls, and the fifth in the middle. The four empty spaces would allow the skylight to pass down between the walls of the rooms. After the blueprints were finished, the Gems restored the concrete pillars until they reached the measurement that Pearl had arranged. The five pillars are cylindrical and thick, recently painted turquoise, and built in the precise measurement in height and diameter in order to carry the weight of over twenty stories of Rooms.

Now it is all settled. The Gems are now installing more steel beams to form the skeleton of the Rooms. The employees are tasked with restoring the lobby and the hotel rooms, cleaning up all the dust and any remaining debris. Outside, the afternoon sun finally shines brightly through the skylight as they work, stopping for a moment to observe the alien sunlight. Lion yawns and basks in the sunlight, laying on top of the Study Room, the one room still standing.

As Mordecai begrudgingly continues to sweep the floors clean, watches the clearer skies outside the broken entrance. He stretches his back and groans. Rigby starts to do the same, coupled with his annoying loud whining. Mordecai grimaces and starts to walk away, not wanting to shut his friend’s mouth for the fourteenth time. Even the sounds of all the work the Gems are doing isn’t as grating. He’s sure that he has a backache now. Why can’t he just quit for a while; Benson wasn’t there, he’s not at risk of getting fired, so why is he bothering? Oh, right, because Steven they had to or something. Whatever.

Making sure that Rigby doesn’t see, he drops his sweep and walks over to the pillars. After looking up to the work that the Gems were doing seemingly non-stop, he decides the noise doesn’t bother him. He stretches his neck and leans comfortably in the center pillar, leaning on the fresh turquoise paint, basking underneath the warmth of the skylight. Ahhhh, how soothing. He could stay there forever...

But somewhere in the back of the tower, where adults would like to rest, the kids are unfortunately restless. Gumball, Darwin, Anais, and Penny sit on a table bored out of their minds, either slumped forward to the table, or backwards to the chair; the very same table they were in hours ago before they were ushered back into the room. For all the hours the Crystal Gems and the park crew worked, the kids had to sit in the ballroom ‘for their own safety.’ They don’t have much to explore, since the whole area had basically been turned into a giant construction zone. Steven paces all across the room trying to think of something to do. His suggestion to take a closer look at the rest of the ballroom had been ignored.

Steven hums loudly. The progress of having fun at the tower is so far… not so good. Having run out of ideas, Steven has his back turned to the group and sighs wistfully, though he continues to try to think. Gumball snorts in annoyance, and lifts his hand up to the table. He starts to bang the table once, followed by Anais tapping on the empty plate with the table’s silverware, then bangs twice, and anais taps again. After the fourth bang, Darwin delivers an immediate bang with his own fist, and as Gumball pauses, Anais continues to tap. The three siblings unconsciously start a new cycle, and Penny begins to whistle a tune as they do so.

Steven eyes slightly widen and he begins to turn around, listening with interest. He squints and listens closely. It’s not random. Gumball and Anais are playing a very specific rhythm, and Penny’s whistles are in sync with said beat. Steven’s eyes begin to light up as he watches their small symphony.

“Hey!” he shouts excitedly, bringing the other kids’ immediate attention to him and seizing their playing. “You guys were playing music!”

They let out small gasps. Penny cracks a little smile.

“Oh—um, really?” Gumball asks with genuine interest. He looks down with the fist he had been drumming with. All the other kids proceed to exchange glances, and pondered just what they were doing, humming in awe at what they realized they just produced. Gumball then looks back at Steven, who starts running up to him.

“No, really!” Steven exclaims as he reaches the table and leans on it, “You guys were doing good! I bet you guys can make music at any time with ease!”

Gumball scoffs. He rolls his eyes and rests his elbow on the table. “Not me. I keep failing music class...”

Steven gasps dramatically and holds his own face. “WHAAAAAAAAAT?!!” He leans closer to Gumball frantically, causing him to flinch slightly. “But why???”

Gumball snorts and pushes Steven away from him, not looking at him in the eye. “Well, my principal says I’ve got... No sense in timing or something. I keep missing cues, I miss triangles.” He turns sharply and glares at Steven in disbelief. “How do you miss a triangle???!”

A sweat pricks on Steven’s raised brow. He shrinks his head down to his shoulders, muttering a mixture of uhhh, and whaaa.

“Strangely enough, he’s got better grades in just about everything else,” Anais comments, bringing the handle of the fork she was tapping with to her chin. “Granted, most of the time it’s because I help him...”

With a small huff, Steven releases his bewildered thoughts and arches his back. “Well, this is simply outrageous!” he declares. “We’ve GOT to teach you right now!” He turns around and sprints away from the table, straight to the door of the ballroom. All the other kids look at him in interest, and Gumball is left wondering what Steven’s got in mind. Steven turns back at the group, smiling widely and panting excitedly.

“Guys,” he announces happily. “Music’s REALLY important. Music is fun, it’s amazing, and it brings people together. If we all played some music, we can be a lot closer, and we can really make the most of our time. We’ll be friends. That’s why I’m gonna teach you how to make music!” He claps his hands and opens the door. “C’mon, let’s started!”

Darwin hops off the table whooping in joy, finally having something to do. He runs to follow Steven through the door. Penny chuckles and floats off, following them both. Gumball simply sputters a raspberry and gets off the table. “O-kay,” he says in insincerity and runs to the others. Steven’s idealism is almost too much for Gumball to bear. Though even he thinks these thoughts might be going a little too far, Gumball hopes that a good blow to the face might knock some reality into Steven.

Still in her table distracted, it takes a minute for Anais to realize what they’re doing, and gasps in worry. “Uh-Wait! They’re still building—” she lingers in silence for a few seconds. She then rolls her eyes in defeat.“Aw, heck, if you can’t beat’em, join’em...” She hops off the table and tries to run to the others, her tiny legs keeping her from fully catching up.

Steven stands tall facing the ballroom’s door with his wrists on his hips. He waits until Darwin, Penny, and Gumball exit to the back of the lobby, the sounds of the Crystal Gems building the Rooms barring ahead of them. Looking back over his shoulder for a moment to hear the noise, Steven faces the others.

“Alright, guys,” he points to the hall on his left. “Pearl said they found lots of stuff on a room that way. I bet we can find instruments there,” he makes a single clap with his hands and starts running left. “C’mon let’s go! Let’s start with some lessons!”

“Hey, woah, wait a minute, wait a minute!” Gumball calls, and Steven stops in confusion.

Huh? Steven turns around. “Uh... What?” Steven asks sincerely.

Gumball clears his throat and averts his gaze slightly. “Well, I was just wondering... we don’t have to use instruments right now...” he explains as playful as he can, not wanting to sound uninterested in the idea of using boring instruments. “Why use all those instruments when you can just use what’s around you? I mean... You heard us back there, we can just use everything else as an instrument.”

Steven’s eyes widen more. Intriguing idea. Is there anything Gumball can’t do to surprise him into silence? Steven stands in silence and puts his fist in his mouth in thought. “Hmmmm... Should we go for the more fun route, like Amethyst would’ve said, or the more practical route like Pearl...?” he thinks to himself out loud. He then gestures to Gumball warmly. “Whatcha got in mind?”

“Oh!” Gumball beams up slightly at the thought of his idea not being shot down for once. He quickly runs to the door. “Y’know, like this!” Gumball slightly opens the door and slams it. The hollow, echoing sound it emits is drum-like, and the hinges are smooth enough to allow him to slam as quickly as he can. He repeats the rhythm he had been drumming with his fingers, slower, but producing a far louder noise than before, then stops. “... Like that.”

Steven observes with interest —and internal excitement— at Gumball’s little improvisation. “That sounds pretty good!” he comments. “But I think we’re gonna need a LOT more doors to make the sound you wanna make. Just the right sound...”

“How about the rooms over there?” Penny asks pointing ahead towards the pillars. They turn to her. “Do you think some of them might work?”

“Worth a shot.” Darwin says almost pleadingly as he turns towards Steven. “...Right?”

Steven smiles warmly. “Whatever you guys want!” his face lights up in joy and eagerness, his eyes shining like stars once more. He pumps himself up, ready for fun, and points ahead to the pillars. “So let’s make some sound!”

Giggles ensue as Steven speedily leads them to the lobby, laughing to himself as he does. As Darwin cheers and Penny starts to giggle again in her bubbly manner, Gumball watches on in contentment as they follow his lead, silently eager to join in on the fun as soon as he can. Unconsciously, his smile begins to fade, and his eyes squint.

But before he can run, Gumball hears the door behind him being knocked hard. His face twists into confusion, and slight fear if it’s really what he thinks it is, and he leans in to open it slowly. When the door opens all the way through, his sister walks out with a scratched face, a bruised eye, and a terrible demonic scowl. His pupils shrink and he begins to sweat as his fears are confirmed. Before he can say anything, Anais holds a finger up.

“Just carry me,” she demands. Gumball looks in a combination of both pity and annoyance, sighing as he grabs her head and starts to sprint towards the others.

In their single-minded goal of fun, the kids run ahead past the pillars, seemingly unaware of their presence and creating half-figure eights as they run straight through them without touching them. Amidst the giggles, and a breeze when Gumball and Anais run past, Mordecai, who has since fallen asleep leaning on the pillar, stirs and mumbles. Uncaring, he immediately resumes his nap, drawing a long, satisfied sigh without opening his eyes once and smacking his “lips,” finding himself a little stuck on the pillar. Rigby opens his bored eyes enough to see the kids speeding past him, bringing the pillars into his view, and watches Mordecai nap. Rigby cracks a smile and tries to stifle his laughter. A quiet, giggly “oh, man” escapes his lips as he approaches Mordecai in his position, ignoring everything around him.

As they reach the lobby, the kids begin to climb up the stairs, looking through doors that haven’t been tilted or decayed severely. They scatter, running throughout the halls and finding doors to use in the rooms of the balcony. Pops observes them from one of the deeper halls and walks ahead, forgetting about vacuuming the carpet.

Gumball sets Anais down on the last floor of the balcony and begins to look for a door. “So...” Anais rubs her chin as she watches Gumball, her anger replaced by interest and a small, curious smile. “What’s the plan?”

“Oh, yeah!” Gumball pauses. “We... are gonna make some music!” Gumball walks up to a door that had not been broken. “With whatever we can find!”

He opens and slams the door, and starts the rhythm from scratch. Darwin, and Anais soon join him in their doorly percussion throughout the functioning doors of the hotel, turning knobs to produce clicking sounds in addition to the low-sounding slams, laughing a little all the while. They all begin to alternate slams, timing the same rhythm quickly and accurately. Penny starts to trot and flutter up the hotel halls as the rhythm echoes through them, listening to the sounds pleasantly.

[Slam-click, slam, slam-click, slamslam. Clickclick. Slam-click, slam…](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHZE7MznSt8)

“Yeah, that’s it!” Steven cheers, walking down the halls with them and paying attention to Penny’s whistles.“You’ve got it! You’ve got the right sound!”

Steven dances along with the rhythm. He starts to “doo” a new melody along with Penny’s whistles as the others slammed the rhythm, trying to think of lyrics on the spot. Pops begins to happily dance as well, laughing quietly to himself as he enjoys the music, and even humming some of the tunes along with Steven. It doesn’t take long for everything to reach Skips’s ears as he mopped the floor around the lobby. He slightly raises one eyebrow in bafflement as he turns around.

“What the heck is all that noise?” asks Skips, somewhat startled.

“It’s music!” Darwin pops out next to Skips seemingly out of nowhere. He snatches Skips’s mop, dancing with it and singing to its dripping head. “Oh today we’re go, go, gooo...”

Skips stares at the kids in baffled amusement, wide-eyed and not cracking a smile, but laughing inside. He watches Penny whistling a little louder. Anais has climbed the stairs, and creates more sounds with the doors along with her brothers, in addition to tapping on the metal bars of the balcony, which produces a strange, piano-like vibration (Anais reels back in confusion at this, but continues regardless). The kids continue to play their improvised symphony, Steven creating “doo-doo-doos” and “dah-dah-dahs” with his mouth, and Pops continues to dance. Gumball and Darwin find themselves singing alongside Steven; Gumball sings slightly more sinister tunes as Anais hit sour “notes,” while Darwin always sung the highest notes.

Penny, in a burst of inspiration, soon starts to fly towards the door at the end of the 8th floor in full speed, straight to the Rooms that the Gems were building. The musical noises from the lobby  drown out as she settles down to the floor and closes the door. She giddily heads up the slopes hallway. She heads up all the way to the 14th floor, panting slightly, then faces one of the four doors from that room. Her smile slowly disappears. She approaches the door with caution, twist the knob, and with a creak, the rather unstable door is pushed open. Penny gulps and looks at the chasm.

The steel beams nearly towered for seven stories from the 8th floor up. The chasm seems larger than Penny remembers it; the horizontal beams spread out widely, almost 20 feet away from each other for each room. This meant that the chasm, and the whole interior of the tower would be miles wide on Penny’s perspective. The Rooms would have to be BIG to warrant such space ―as they ought to be, after all, what’s in store in the future Rooms would need it. Somehow, looking at all the work in progress, the music back at the lobby rings in her mind again, despite not hearing it. Penny looks up to find the Study Room in the 16th floor, though she couldn’t see Lion. She looks down and finds the Crystal Gems at work… certainly not as she expected it to be (especially considering her father’s profession).

She watches in awe as Pearl, in the beams from the 9th floor, walks effortlessly in perfect balance with her tiptoes as she reaches towards her conjured toolbelt for a angle measuring tool, testing the accuracy of the beams as far as the tower’s architecture would allow. Deciding that it was satisfactory and safe, Pearl leaps in a single bound to the beams in the 10th floor, and twirls herself to stand at the top of one of them, walking towards the corner to repeat the process. Amethyst also walks around the higher beams closer to Penny in perfect balance, but doesn’t seem to do anything of importance, more like she’s goofing off, and yet she demonstrates casual acrobatics and finds her hanging on to a beam with a single arm while keeping her body rigid and hopping around without concern of falling. She looks up at Garnet walking down one of the uppermost beams, carrying under her single arm another beam by herself to put it into place with a gigantic drill in her other arm and a tool belt of her own, just as causal as the others.

She gives Penny a quick glance from behind her shades.

Penny gasps and suddenly finds herself overcome with shyness. She immediately closes the door and backs away, blushing and taking rapid little breaths. She feels a strong tingle, like butterflies in her stomach. She turns into a blue butterfly in response, and starts to flutter around frantically.

“Oh, oh, oh! What am I gonna do? I can’t go out like this! They’re too good!” she says to herself in a tiny insect voice. “Oh, come on, Penny,” she transforms into a dark green weasel and speaks in a smug voice. “You’re a cheerleader, for goodness sake! Act like it! You’ve performed for even more intimidating people before… granted,” she reverts back to her original form. “...they weren’t aliens from another universe… ” she taps lightly at her form, then lets out a sigh. She runs up the halls towards the 20th floor.

“You know, Amethyst…” Pearl says as she turns her head towards her, in a gentle tone but with an obvious hint of annoyance. “You COULD help us out a little bit more don’t you think?”

“I am helping!” Amethyst shouts defensively, and jokingly, while hanging from her legs in a beam. “I’m testing how strong these these things are! If I fall, that means they aren’t strong!”

Pearl simply looks away dismissively. Her and the others’ attention is brought forward when she hears a little voice shouting from above.

“Excuse me?”

Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl look up to find Penny standing on the edge of one of the doors of the 20th floor. With all the attention on her, and the sight of Lion snoozing without a care on top of the Study Room, Penny almost blushes again, but decides to keep a compustore. After all that’s what performers are supposed to do.

“Oh, pardon? Please move away from the door!” Pearl shouts upwards, not to scold her, but out of concern. “This is a very dangerous place!”

Penny shyly holds her hands forward. “I-I know, but…!” hoo boy, stuttering. “I just wanna show you something… If that’s not too much trouble. I just felt so inspired and excited and I want to see if I can do this.”

The Gems don’t respond. Garnet looks down to see Pearl and Amethyst directing their attention to her, questioning on what they could do. Garnet looks at them with some moments of thought. She turns her head back towards Penny.

“Go ahead, then,” Garnet suggests.

Penny takes a breath and gulps. She closes her eyes, and continues to breathe, her mind locked in concentration, blocking almost everything else away. Her surroundings no longer existed She puts a foot forward, and takes a sludgy step. She lets herself fall. And she flies.

With the right amount of space, she gains the momentum for it. She falls and flies up, opening her eyes if only to see the beams obscuring her path. She flies around the beams, in figure eights, in rings, and in use of momentum to fly in higher speed. She flies fast and feels a breeze in her fairy-like body. This feels different from cheerleading. It’s not like the dance music and it’s not a previously rehearsed and planned dance, and she’s no longer clumsy or uncoordinated, something she feels happy about. It’s something that comes to her herself. She feels it and she thinks it. She finally gets a little tired from flying, and starts to simply float around the beams, making her own twirls and pirouettes in a way she couldn’t do as a cheerleader on her shell —kinda cheating, she imagines. Garnet and Amethyst watch everything Penny does in interest, intrigued by her abilities. Pearl watches blankly in puzzlement, not entirely of what to think. But she knew it had to be at least little bit positive.

Penny lets out a small series of whistles as she floats further.

After the percussion in the lobby ceases slightly, leaving only Gumball and Steven’s vocals (and Penny’s whistles, deaf to the others’ ears), it begins to start again in triumph and full-on fun. But they don’t intend to stop just yet.

“Ha, ha, ha!!!” Gumball laughs heartily —but not mischievously— in the heat of the moment, then yells to Darwin, “Maybe we can get those ladies up there to join us!!”

“Really??” shouts Darwin with his fins clasped together.

“Yeah! They look, uh... musical enough! There’s more doors in there, too! C’mon!” he starts to dash towards the same door Penny flew in, still unbeknownst to her disappearance, and Darwin follows him excitedly. Anais stops what she’s doing when she watches her brothers head towards the danger sone. Her smile disappears, and is replaced with assuring tension as to the obvious outcome.

“Uh, Steven?!” Anais yells agitatedly. Steven stops humming, noticing he’s being called and that the music has stopped, though Pops continued to dance.

He looks worriedly at Anais. “What is it?” he asks.

“Construction zone!” she points towards the door that led to the Rooms, her face twisted in an upwards frown frown that combines fear and anger. “They just went there!”

He frowns in confusion, slightly disturbed. “Construction zone…?” he asks. Then he realizes. He gasps in terror and puts his hands to his face. “OH, NO!!!” he immediately stumbles down, scrambles to his feet, and dashes towards the door. Anais tries to catch up with him on her stubby feet, panting all the way. Pops continues to dance as if the music had never stopped abruptly, while Skips watches the kids head up to the door that led to the Rooms, moving back to his standard scowl. He has a bad feeling about this.

As the hallways of the Rooms are filled with hyperactive laughter, Gumball stops to pant, and Darwin stops next to him.

“Dude, I wanna go higher!” Darwin exclaims, pointing farther to the hall.

Gumball hums. “Alright, here’s the plan, you go higher, and I’ll stay over here. So we can make echoes or something!”

Darwin joyfully dashes to the 21st floor, while Gumball goes ahead and stops at the 9th floor, panting some more.

Gumball stands at the door, moves quickly forward and opens it a little too harshly. The first of the three hinges loosens as he leans forwards sharply. He looks down to see the vast chasm and the pillars, then looks ahead to find the Gems looking at something above them. Before he could try to look up himself, Amethyst notices him. She turns to walk towards him on one of the upper beams with a small smile.

“Heyyyy, cat,” Amethyst asks playfully, twirling around to hang from an upper beam upside down with her hands and legs. She looks ‘upwards’ towards him, leaning as far back as her fingers grasping the beam would allow. “What’re you doing over there? It’s kinda dangerous, unless you can fly,” she says that last word in a low, sarcastic pitch.

“We’re just trying to make music,” Gumball states, and grips the door handle. “We’re just trying to make some sound, like this!” he quickly pulls back and slams the door, producing a loud bang that loosens the second hinge.

Amethyst releases her grip from one of her hands, staring at the weak door. Is it supposed to do that?

Gumball laughs at himself with the sound the door produces, completely ignorant of the weakening door. He then hears some shouts coming from down the hall. He turns his head to find Steven and Anais, scoffing at their worried faces.

“Gumball,” Steven takes a breath. “Please stop slamming that door…”

“Why?” Gumball asks, completely clueless and seemingly uncarin. “You said I could do it!”

“Gumball, you get away from that door,” Anais outright commands. Her voice sounds more cold than agitated, and her deep scowl reaches the top of her eyeballs.

Gumball starts quietly laughing at her. “Sis, why are you getting so worked up?”

Gumball is now trying to mock her. She only started to scowl harder, tilting her head down without keeping her sinister stare on him. Her voice sounds colder. “Gumball, don’t be stupid. You’re gonna get hurt.” She states with clear certainty.

Oh no. Steven’s definitely seen this before. He gulps slightly

At this point, Gumball feels threatened. His smile disappears for a moment, but tries to smile again in compustore. He leans against the door with seeming smug confidence, continuing to rile up his sister. “C’mon, sis. I got this, I’m not gonna fa—”

The door breaks forward from the top down, sending Gumball towards the chasm his face turning blank and his eyes beady as it happens.

“Wo-ho-hoah!!” Amethyst exclaims and rights herself with a flip, now standing on top of the beam. The Gems stand up and exchange “Ohs” in alarm as they begin to leap on the beams closer to Gumball and the broken door. His body is splayed across the door and his clawed fingertips firmly planted on the surface. Steven and Anais look in horror, while the Gems try to make sense on what they should do, unsure if they should interfere, or whether Gumball can get out on his own.

“U-um, do you, need any help?” Pearl asks in alarming concern. She looks at Steven, silently asking whether they should

“Nononono, wait wait… No I got it, I got it…” Gumball sputters, trying to slowly turn around, but finding his sweat too slippery. “I can do this, really, I can…” he lifts an arm, releasing a clawed hand from the door to start crawling to safety, but the door begins to creak at the shift in weight. He draws an agitated breath, and his heart goes on miles. “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine,” he tells the Gems, but mostly to himself.

Steven kneels down and stretches his arm out. “… Okay, Gumball…” he tries to coax. “Just try to reach my hand… We’ll pull you out in no time.” His arm started to shake as Gumball slowly but desperately tried to reach it. The Gems looked on in tension.

Darwin reached the door of the 21st floor, unaware of what’s happening below. He opens the door harshly, though this door’s hinges are smooth. He looks around at the chasm, and looks up to find Penny still floating in her moment. Looking at her performance, he thinks about telling that to Gumball later. But he looks down and finds something strange at the floors below, like a bunch of figures seemingly on the same spot. Is something going on down there? He starts to lean forward to take a closer look, his feet reaching out farther towards the edge, and trying to hold on to the handle of the door.

Penny finally decides to finish. Upon realizing the Gems paid no attention to her anymore, Penny looks around in puzzlement, with some slight disappointment. She proceed to float down to try to find where they went, until she sees what is clearly happening. Her breath catches in her throat when he sees a familiar body clinging to life at a loose door as she tried not to shapeshift in horror.

“GUMBALL!!” She cries out.

“Penny—?” Gumball quickly turns his body upwards. He suddenly shifts his weight too fast, and the hingeless side of the door collapses towards the chasm with only the last hinge as support.   

“AAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!” With a noisy squeaky scream, Gumball precariously clings to the edges of the door, his face stuck in a terrified stiff. Steven cringes and blows from his mouth, while Anais covers her face with a hand and peeks between her fingers. The Gems are more alert, fully prepared to help him now as it becomes clear to them he is not going to be able to climb up, but realizing if they did something now, the door would collapse entirely. They swiftly move in closer with caution, save for Amethyst.

After breathing hard, Steven wipes the sweat off his palm with his side, and moves to reach Gumball again. Gumball tries to lean forward as much as he can, sweat trickling down the side of his face as he lifts his arm and tries to reach Steven’s hand.

Penny gasps in horror, and begins to sweat from her forehead, being forced to concentrate her emotions so as not to shapeshift into anything that couldn’t fly. Calmly, but still concerned, she tries to float down quickly to his aid.

“Gumball?” Darwin begins to lean further into the door’s opening and farther out in the chasm. Only his heels are planted in the edge now, and the door creaks further open, taking his grip with it. Darwin slowly lacks something to support his arms with.

He feels himself slipping.

“Oops…” he squeaks out, just before tumbling off. His squeaky screams as he falls manage to catch Penny’s attention. She turns around to look, only for Darwin to collid straight onto her. Penny falls with him, both of them screaming along the way.

Amethyst, being on a higher beam, looks at the kids fall before the other Gems get a chance to. Without thinking, she leaps upwards, attempting to lock her arms around the kids to protect them from the impact. In a quick move, she brings the kids to her two arms, but her face curls into a startled frown when she realizes too late she let go of the beam. She starts to stammer as she feels herself falling, her chest unconsciously turned away from the ground.

Just as Steven manages to reach Gumball’s fingers, and they both start giving little hopeful smiles, Gumball is startled by screams and a breeze behind him. He turns around, shifting his weight again, the last hinge giving out. Gumball does not get a chance to jump up as the door finally falls with him. Gumball screams and instinctively positions his body away from the ground. Steven nearly falls himself as he tries in vain to reach him, but Anais pulls him back by the shirt.

Amethyst falls on her back on top of the pillar, cushioning Darwin and Penny’s fall. She has no time to groan as the door comes falling towards them. She extends her legs and kicks the the door, breaking it into pieces. As the door breaks, Gumball bounces right off with a squeal, straight over the edge of the pillar.

“MORDECAI!” Rigby yells, startling Mordecai awake.

“Wha-a-wha, wha... W-what?” Mordecai tried to turn his head towards Rigby but finds himself planted to the pillar, possibly still too groggy.

“Dude, you were asleep standing up!” Rigby shrieks in amusement. “I just watched you the whole time. Too bad I didn’t have a camera, or a permanent marker!!!”

Mordecai grimaces and attempts to move away, but finds himself stuck to the pillar. Quite literally. His grimace turns into a look of alarm, and he forcefully pulls away from the pillar. He looks in utter disgust to find a silhouette in the pillar with a wrinkly texture and small dead feathers stuck to the surface, most of them from his head.

“WHAT TH- WH-H!??” Mordecai reaches to his head to feel the possible missing feathers, then pulls his hand back to find turquoise flakes. He opens his mouth wide open as he reaches a terrible conclusion.

“AUUUGH, THE PAINT WAS STILL WET??!”

For a moment, Rigby is blank. He then sputters his lips and begins to laugh maniacally. He points at a seething Mordecai and cackles his head off with loudness.

Rigby then opens his eyes and looks up to laugh at Mordecai further. His laughter immediately ceases, and lets out a long, drawn gasp. He looks up at the chaos above, and the crash at the top of the pillar. He looks up to see Gumball sliding rapidly down the pillar, leaving a trail of claw marks and wrinkles from his body onto the paint.

Mordecai notices Rigby’s sudden horror, and tries to turn around to see what was happening.

“No wait, Mordecai,” Rigby tells him matter-of-factly, with a hint of fear. Mordecai looks down at him with a frown. “Keep lookin’ at me.”

“Why—?”

He is cut off by a sudden hit in the back of his head. Gumball falls onto Mordecai’s head and he collapses onto the floor. Gumball lays on Mordecai’s back, glazed from the impact, and the bird finds himself in pain from the back of his neck down, groaning.

At the top of the pillar, Amethyst pulls the splintered remains of the door on top of her and the other kids with a scrunched and painful, but mostly annoyed grimace. Darwin looked as glazed as Gumball was, but was conscious enough to look submissive and apologetic towards the people above. Penny had transformed into a stiffened gray goat with black beady eyes, lying on her side.

Anais brings both of her hands to her face and starts to moan quietly in sheer, anxious exasperation. She rubs her hands far enough for her rage-filled eyes to see the aftermath of the disaster. Steven looks below with his eyes growing as wide as dinner plates. Steven looks at Garnet and Pearl. He can’t read Garnet’s expression as she stares at him and looks down and puts her finger and thumb at the base of her shades, looking as if she is quietly chastising herself for not preventing that. Pearl looks at everything in the same exasperation as Anais, with heavy breathing through her nose, not quite unlike her reaction when Amethyst once popped a bubble she had.

Steven gulps. Maybe they should have gone with the more practical route.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs are going to play a pretty big part in the series, but the song links are perfectly optional. They're not meant to be read-alongs, as accurate the description and timing are made of it, because I understand how distracting they can be to people.
> 
> I've got some more to say on the FFnet version, but if you have any questions, go to toon-tower.tumblr.com. I'll probably make some more statements there, too.


	6. Retro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This would have been uploaded yesterday if I wasn't a responsible author and I didn't proofread it like last time, where entire lines of dialogue were missing in the original upload. But it's properly edited now, for the most part.

What followed was a haze of half-anger, and half-worry in part of the other Crystal Gems. Pearl and Garnet called the rest of the park crew over, ushered everyone into a different room in the tower, and made it clear they were going to continue their work uninterrupted. As they took the gentle, yet firm scolding from them, feelings of shame and disappointment came over some of the kids, while everyone else seemed annoyed or even uninterested. They made their way to the inside of the room. They’ve been sent to the restaurant at the west part of the tower.

Different from the ballroom, it is not intended to appear as a fancy dining hall, after all, when you want to feed cartoons, you must take certain precautions so as to not let anything important break at their hands. The room has the appearance of a fast food restaurant with a distinctive old-school look; the booths, the floors, and the walls are decorated in simple shapes, wavy lines, and pastel colors, complimented by the white-blue LED lights illuminating the entirety of the room. Unlike most of the other rooms of the tower, it looks no worse for wear, as if, being the main eatery of the tower it could sanitize itself for obvious reasons.

The park crew took two separate booths closer to the double doors that led to the metallic-white colored kitchen, Mordecai and Rigby on one, Skips and Pops on the other. Concerns were made amongst the adults regarding who should feed whom according to age, but were assured by their current (underaged) chef that they didn’t need to worry as they made their way towards the kitchen. The crew sits calmly, but in obvious boredom and dissatisfaction. Penny and Anais sit in a booth further in the back, one looking rather dejected as she hunches down to the table, the other filled with hidden, concentrated scorn, with a small, yet visible frown in her face.

Steven peeks outside the double doors from the kitchen out into the restaurant with worry in his face over the previous events, watching the sour moods. Getting even just a little bit scolded be the other Gems, combined with the current atmosphere of negativity, is enough to bring his mood down. With a sigh, he returns to look back inside the kitchen. Though normally he would show interest, he instead shows disappointment.

In said kitchen, Gumball is sprayed with a strong jet of water, enough to knock him back onto a wall and nearly flatten him. He gargles and flails as he is pinned down into the wall with all the water pressure up his body. He coughs and sputters once it’s stopped, his whole body dripping wet. He looks at Darwin holding the hose attached to the kitchen sink.

“Well, is it off??” Gumball demands.

“I don’t know, dude,” Darwin shrugs. “It’s kinda hard to tell since the paint is the same color as your fur.” He flinches and sprays him again with more force. He soaks him from head to toe with extra pressure, some of the water even reaching his orifices.

“STOP!!!” Gumball yells between gargles. He coughs and sputters some more as Darwin finally turns off the faucet. He lies down on the floor, and gets up in a hunch. He lifts one of his ears to shake and smack the water stuck inside the canal, and he snorts the water stuck inside his nostrils. Then he smacks his lips and starts breathing heavily. “I’m done, I’m done. I think I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” Darwin asks.

Gumball groggily stands up straight and hold his arm out. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s… enough.” He turns his head towards the kitchen door to try to shake more water off his clothes and fur, and finds Steven standing there, his eyes not as sparkly as they previously were.

“Hey guys,” he greets with a smile that seems forced. “Uhhh, we should try to figure out what’s going on with this place…” He tries to instill curiosity again, however at this point, it’s really anything to get his mind off of what happened.

“Yeah, we were getting hungry anyhow,” Gumball says thoughtlessly as he turns around and starts to look around the kitchen. “Though, I think we’d still be rocking out at the lobby if nothing went so bad,” he pouts slightly.

Whoops, no such luck. Steven’s face scrunches with shame, and sulks down further.

“Dude, you know this is technically your fault, right?” Darwin points out to Gumball, almost accusingly.

Gumball stares at Darwin in seeming indifference, but understanding in secret that he can’t argue. Gumball turns away from Darwin as he crosses his arms and wonders further down the kitchen, and faces Steven in apparent concern with his state.

“What’s eatin’ ya, dude?” he asks, sounding more like a statement than a question.

Steven doesn’t make eye contact. “I’m just saying maybe we rushed into things… Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea… If I had been there sooner, I could’ve done something, and it wouldn’t have happened. We could have still had fun and it wouldn’t have turned out like this. But I think everything went too fast, and now it’s not looking so good.”

Gumball snorts silently. “Well, dude. You can’t be everywhere,” he suggests casually. “What you gotta learn when you help people is, that everything’s gonna gonna go wrong.” He turns his back on him dramatically, his casual voice letting out some levels of sourness. “Everything!” he announces. He looks over his shoulder to look at Steven with eyes lacking any gleam.

“That’s why you gotta look out for number one,” he points to himself. “‘Cause no one else is going to.”

Steven blinks in uncertainty, still in a slump. He puts his hand toward his chin and faces away from Gumball. Gumball crosses his arms, waiting for a response, wondering why Steven hasn’t tried to “correct” him as even Darwin often did. After a few moments, Steven brings his head up in realization, which Gumball takes some note to.

“Oh… wait, I get it!” Steven says with some of his enthusiasm returning. “Even though I wanna help people, I should take breaks every now and then to take care of myself, right? Some things I just can’t control, and I have to deal with it. That’s a pretty good advice, Gumball, I think I’m starting to feel better! Thanks!”

Gumball rolls his eyes and does a small sigh. Not really what he intended. “Yeah, sure,” he croaks. He then chuckles a bit to himself. “You’re a really… open dude, did you know that? I mean, is there anything that does upset you?”

Steven lets one one of his famous giggles, still not quite over his slump, but with his mood improved. He then ponders at the question. “Well, there’s a lot of things that upset me, mostly about… the mortality of Gem stuff…” Steven articulated it so Gumball wouldn’t get too curious about certain details involving Gumball’s species (Steven still shudders at the memory, tried as he might to think of as many cat puns to try to repress it). Speaking of cats and a kitchen…  

“…There is one,” Steven says more loudly. “But it’s pretty trivial at this point, I’m starting to grow out of it.”

Gumball hums. “Go ahead,” he suggests. Maybe he can exploit that later— nevermind.

Steven hesitates slightly. “It’s about these things called Cookie Cats—”

“GUYS!!!” Darwin suddenly shrieks. “LOOK AT THIS!!!”

Gumball and Steven turned to see Darwin standing in front of a large, metallic, trapezium-shaped fridge, with its door open. His jaw is dropped, his eyes look as if they would pop out of their sockets, and a single fin is pointed at what is inside. Gumball and Steven quickly run to where Darwin is, and all three peek inside.

“Whoaaaa,” Steven and Gumball stare in amazement at the surprisingly vast collection of foodstuff in the large fridge, arranged into a food pyramid. At the top sit the desserts and sweets like ingredients of ice cream, kept indefinitely cold by a freezer inside that particular shelf, and yet a separate shelf for doughnuts and other candies. In one of the shelves below sit an assortment of milks, cheeses, creams, and then next to it are pre-made meats; with cold steaks and chickens made to be cooked and cut, beefs, sausages, hams, bacons, and even some seafood. In the shelf below that sit all sorts of preserved vegetables, and in the shelf next to it sit colorful fruits, with tropical ones such as pineapples given particular focus. At the bottom shelf, breads sat neatly stacked in a corner, including breads for hot dogs, and bags of loafs of bread in slices were wrapped up next to the bags of other grains.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Gumball exclaims in genuine interest. He leans into the refrigerator and takes a few cat-like whiffs, then a long one. He takes a short moment to ponder at the smell, finding nothing dangerously irregular. He pulls out a random pack of sausages from the meat shelf, unwraps one, and sniffs it thoroughly. He then licks and nibbles it, and smacks his lips. “Dude…” his voice shakes in excitement. “All this stuff is fresh!”

Darwin ‘oos’ as he looks at the good sausage in Gumball’s hand. Steven’s mood fluctuates between amazement, bafflement, and a small hint of questionability more than curiosity. How all these foodstuffs have been acquired and kept fresh, particularly the things made from earthly animals, is an enigma to him. Perhaps the map will explain this further, or not much.

Gumball, however, grins in joy. He places the sausage into his mouth like a cigar, and runs to quickly grabs an apron from the kitchen’s nearby closet. After tying it to himself with extreme quickness, he runs to grab a tray from a metal rolling table, Darwin following him all the way. He runs back to the refrigerator and scoops up as many ingredients as he can fit in the tray. He stops, then slurps the rest of the sausage into his mouth, chews it, then swallows it.

“UHHH, DOES ANYBODY WANT ANY HOT DOGS OR… ANYTHING???” He shouts at the kitchen door’s direction. There is no response, yet he moves over to a table close to the stoves, sinks, and limitless kitchenware. He places the tray on to a table and prepares to separate the ingredients. Some potatoes, vegetables, fruits, sausages, and a chicken. Darwin quietly slips away to look for some more food, while Steven approaches Gumball, curiosity mixed in with numbness.

Gumball scrunches his eyes and breathes heavily as he twiddles and stretches his hands in preparation. He then turns toward a dot-eyed Steven, expression unchanged. “What were you saying?…” his eyebrows suddenly twist incredulity. “Cookie Cats??”

Steven grins a little nervously. “It’s an ice cream! It was an old ice cream sandwich shaped like a cat head, that I liked a lot, and I thought it would give me magic powers so I ended up wasting it,” he catches his breath. “I was hoping that maybe we could re-create it here. This place has just about anything, so I had this…  gut feeling.”

Gumball stares at nothing with his eyes wide. He slowly puts his hand to his chin, and blinks rapidly in thought. He swallows slightly. Worth it? Is it worth it? He wonders. He then squints, looks at Steven, and takes a breath.

“What’d they taste like…?” Gumball almost whispered, not a hint anywhere of sarcasm.

Oh. Steven puts both hands to the temples of his head as he struggles to remember. “It… tasted really good! Uh… I think it was a lot of chocolate on the outside part, that’s what it tasted like. Then there was… some vanilla and strawberry on the inside, I think… I think that’s I really remember…”

As Steven speaks, Gumball closes his eyes and his fingers twiddle in an imaginary coordination. In a black void, he visualizes the flavors with his tongue. Chocolate. A sweetly brown, iced, stimulating waterfall of fun and goodness contacting in the tongue to becoming deliciousness. Vanilla. Snowy, creamy, milky sunset condensed into a bright palette, such flavor then remembered in the palate. Strawberry. A field of redness, and a mineral-enriched taste, a true, magnificent product of gems in the ground. Not quite enough to make a full sandwich. He imagines an additional combination of flour, maybe an egg… He thinks.

“Hey,” Darwin brings Gumball out of his trance smacking him slightly. “I found some more stuff there!” he points towards an open wooden cabinet right next to the trapezium fridge, containing non-refrigerated food and ingredients like cans, flour and spices. Then it’s settled; it’s time to begin.

“Alright, then.” Gumball brings his hands out, and pauses to quickly think of simple recipes. “…Let’s go make food, we’re all hungry.”

Steven watches as Gumball and Darwin begin to assemble in lightning speed the ingredients and tools to make chicken salad bowls, fries, and hot dogs for everybody. Darwin listens to Gumball’s suggestions… Not so much suggestions as they are increasingly exasperated and micromanaging commands, demanding that the chicken be cooked exactly right, and the sausages be roasted at an extremely specific temperature. Gumball then reaches speedily at the fridge to grab soda bottles from the top shelf, nearly falling and knocking over some of the other foods. Darwin almost slips in some of the bits of vegetables that had been cut and fell to the ground, and nearly crashes into Gumball. In the spawn of minutes, both Gumball and Darwin nearly prepare at least four hot dogs, two salad bowls, and plenty of fries in the frier. The potato bits, lettuces, and even some of the ketchup begin to stick to their bodies.

“Uh, guys?” Steven asks, but no one pays attention. “I think I’m just gonna let you guys do your thing… I think this is pretty serious business for you guys.” Seeing the chef’s agitation and increasing chaos, Steven quietly moves to exit the kitchen, still interested in seeing how they cook, but not wanting to break either of their concentration.

He walks through the doors and through the restaurant past the booths where the park crew sit, and sits isolated in a separate booth, now as a spectator for the remainder of the time. Though he had supposedly misinterpreted the message Gumball was trying to give him, Steven truthfully has a sinking feeling about it. He looks over at Penny and Anais, and begins to piece things together from within his mind, leaning his fingers against his mouth.

Meanwhile, Skips turns his head to find the thinking Steven in a booth farther back behind where he sits, and peeks to Mordecai and Rigby’s booth while Pops is distracted by the restaurant’s decorations. While Skips then returns to his own thinking, Mordecai scratches the back of his head and finds more turquoise flakes in his feathers, now realizing he never had the time to wash the paint off properly.

Mordecai finally snorts. “Huh. I get it, Rigby,” he says sourly. “You told me to keep looking at you so that poor cat didn’t get big pointy beak shoved up his butt. Yeah, nice paternal instincts.”

“Weeell,” Rigby squeaks out in false innocence. “It’s really more that I didn’t want you to get a face-full of cat butt.” He cracks a sly grin. “But now that you MENTION it…”

“Ugh,” Mordecai shudders, a small sense of nausea in the taste of his mouth that almost eliminated his appetite. He leans back to the cushy booth, only to feel another surge of pain as his neck stretched. He turns his head, or at least attempts to, and takes a few moments to look at the old-fashioned imagery of the restaurant. He turns towards the booth Skips and Pops sit in, both much older than they were. He tries to feel his own face. Deep down, he begins to feel disturbed, as he swallows slightly. Mordecai snorts in irritation —and nostalgia.

“Face it dude,” he begins to assent tiredly. “We’re getting old.”

It takes Rigby a moment to pick up on what Mordecai says, and his eyebrows rise. He then lets out a drawn, engine-like sigh, his face wrinkling into a teeth-grated frown.

“No, no we’re not, Mordecai,” Rigby almost scolded him, trying to sound as serious as possible in his shrill voice, before going back to a casual tone. “You’re getting paranoid, man. It’s all in your head! We’re doing just fine! Look you got injured, okay? That’s why you’re hurting oh soooo much.”

“It’s not just this, Rigby,” Mordecai states defensively, in a low tone. “It’s what we’re into, it’s what we’re missing, it’s… a little like this place,” he gestures the whole room. “We’re spending so much time into all this, it feels like we’re aging with it… you know? The eighties were thirty years ago now, and the seventies were forty. Forty, Rigby. We’re gonna get past our prime, and we’re gonna get just as old as all of this. We’re gonna get left behind. There’s gonna be new stuff coming out, and we’re just sitting here not doing anything important, we’ll probably end up like Pops. And, well…” he hesitates. He takes a deep breath.

“When we’re gone… who’s gonna care, man. Nothing lasts forever.”

Rigby stays quiet. He frowns less in anger and more in slight worry. They’re still too young to be having a midlife crisis… but now Mordecai just had to put those thoughts into his head. Great. What was he thinking. “Dude… I think we should talk about something else.”

Mordecai sighs. “No, dude. We keep trying to distract ourselves from this. We’ve done that for too long. Over and over. Feels like we really need to do something with our lives besides this.”

“Yeah. But we’re not at home, right now, to do that,” Rigby states in the same scolding tone as before, but with a strong hint of condescension. “When we get home after we’re done with all of this, then we’ll worry, alright?”

Mordecai doesn’t respond, or even shoot a disapproving look. He’s right. They shouldn’t worry about time at the moment. But it’s not like he’s just gonna ignore it for long.

“Alright,” he sighs in defeat and facepalms. Then tries to put on his usual casual tone, but he knows for sure he is not going to let his thoughts go forgotten. “Let’s stop sulking around and let’s talk about the, uh, Gems.” He draws out the word slightly, Truthfully, he did want to know more about them, but he awaits a typical reaction.

“Oh, I get it, you find them hot!” A shout that comes from Rigby’s mouth. Just as expected.

Mordecai rubs a finger and his thumb onto his eyelids. Now he feels as if he’s aged thirty more years. “Anyway—” he grits.

Elsewhere in the chasm, the Gems almost finish building the beams for the Rooms. Only ten more stories left to go. Pearl works with less calm and grace, and more seriousness and firmness, particularly regarding the ruined state of the painted pillar; she would have to scrape everything off and start all over, but she simply doesn’t have time for that right now. Garnet does not appear to have changed much in expression, but takes note to fasten the pace of her own work. Pearl looks up at her questioningly upon noticing this. No official announcement from her yet, but Pearl awaits as she continues her tasks. As soon as Pearl looks away, Garnet takes a quick glance at Amethyst.

Amethyst naps in a sole beam, in a position where it appears she would fall right off— laying on her stomach, weight unevenly shifted, and a foot swinging off the ledge. Her false snores almost echoed through the chasm, fully aware of how much it would annoy Pearl. Her eyebrow scrunches, and her mouth starts to smack.

Her left eye suddenly shoots open. “…‘M hungry.” she mutters.

She gets to her feet and starts to quickly hop down the other pillars with as much precision as she wishes. She drops her body right between the other pillars without touching them, and crouches down as she lands on her feet. She starts to jog and bounce, and do cartwheels for no particular reason as she reaches the restaurant doors. She scratches her stomach prepping itself for ‘chow time’ and slows herself down. She opens the doors and walks casually inside, yawning and looking around with intrigue but in no particular attention. Steven cracks a little smile upon seeing her enter, but she doesn’t notice him right away. She stops next to Mordecai and Rigby’s booth, and begins to listen curiously. Rigby seems to be chuckling about something.

“…So do ya think the purple one is like Muscle Man as a chick or what?”

“No, dude. She’s way too hot.” Mordecai says without thinking.

“I dunno I feel kinda… ambient temperature right now,” Amethyst carelessly quips.

Mordecai immediately jumps up from his seat, producing inaudible gasp and watching in horror as Amethyst just stands there. Rigby lets out a wide-mouthed wheeze and simply throws back and laughs hysterically, enough to keep wheezing and almost busting a gut. Mordecai puts both of his feathered hands to his reddening face and cracking voice, while Rigby the hardest he’s ever laughed since entering the tower. Amethyst’s eyelids droop in nonchalance, but cracks a little smirk. All the laughter bring Skips’s and Pops’s attention, and they move to watch what is happening.

“Augh… Dude,” Mordecai moans with a single hand to his face as his arm slumps down and his face started to get redder. “If they were here, they’d never let me hear the end of it, man,” He quickly turns his head to Amethyst, who is still there. He covers his eyes again. “Aughhhh.” Skips can’t help but chuckle.

“Ahhhh, ha, ha…!!” Rigby’s laughter starts to crack, and he starts coughing from his throat becoming moist. He directs to Amethyst with a wide grin. “Epic timing!!! HA! I dunno ‘bout you, but you’re totally awesome already!”

Amethyst hums and makes a silent chuckle. “Well, I don’t even have to try!” she attempts to gloat. She thinks to herself for a moment. That “accent” that they show seems somewhat familiar to her. “So what’s up with you guys?” she asks playfully.

Mordecai finally takes his hand off his face, and winces when he tries to lean back again. Nope, he shouldn’t be thinking about that now. “Well, y’know…” he attempts to sound casual as he tries to pull his arms behind his head in a lounging position. “We’re just here… hangin’ out, like we usually do…”

Rigby tries to copy Mordecai and starts to lounge himself. “Yeah, we were just— gueeigh!” Rigby stumbles back into a sitting position once he leans too far on the edge of the booth. He clears his throat, no longer quite as confident. “… We were just talkin’ about you guys. You and the others are freaky… but in a good way! You get what we’re sayin’, right?”

Amethyst slightly nods to herself as she listens to them talk.

“Well, earlier they got a little bit too nostalgic. They’re complaining about bein’ too old,” Skips tells Amethyst.

“Dude!” Mordecai glares at the hundred-year-old immortal yeti.

“Come on, you know you need this,” Skips claims.

“Ha, ha, what?” Amethyst chuckles in disbelief. “Are you kidding? How old are you anyway? You look young. I thought birds and racoons only lived like, ten years or less.”

Mordecai and Rigby’s faces scrunches in discomfort.

Amethyst gradually stops smiling. “Hey, quit sulking around,” Amethyst says casually, yet also serious at heart. “It’s not good to look at the past for too long. ‘Cause then you’ll miss out on all the fun that’s happening right now.” She begins to lean against the table of the booth. “Where I'm from, I get that a lot, but what I like about being a Gem, is I get to see AAALLLLL the ways the stuff just changes all the time. New stuff to see and stuff, and just being in the nooow.” She attempts to gesture the entire room. She stops smiling to see, just for a moment, if these two understand. She receives no response as they both start to consider.

Amethyst slowly begins to smirk again. If these guys give her the vibes she suspects, she’ll have the same fun she’s been wanting again for decades. “But if you really have to keep thinking about it, there’s always looking at the past with a little twist,” she drew out that last word in a sly, snake-like slither, all in anticipation.

Rigby looks at her and cocks his eyebrow, and Mordecai’s eyelids rise open.

Got ‘em. “Huh! You know, like music stuff! Just play something you liked back in the day and give it the now treatment! Works with other stuff too. You take something old, and make it look new! That way, you’ll know you still got it! You gotta remind yourself that you’re still alive, and you’re stayin’ that way!”

Mordecai swallows, his mind racing. He slowly turns his head around. But how…? “Play something we liked back then?” he throws his head back and brings his finger feathers together, processing a basic idea. He shuts his eyes tightly. “Give it the now treatment…”

“But where are we gonna get the instruments for that?” asks Rigby abruptly.

Amethyst is silent. She pouts her lips, and starts to twist her head around. She looks over her shoulder to find Lion standing on the doorway, no doubt smelling the food that Gumball is cooking up already, and carrying something with his mouth. Her eyelids open wider for a moment.

“Maybe you can use that?” she points behind her in Lion’s direction.

Mordecai and Rigby are soon alarmed when they notice just what it actually is on Lion’s mouth. Mordecai stumbles out of the booth to retrieve a keyboard resembling The Power that Lion is holding with his teeth. Lion opens his jaw and nearly drops it, much to Mordecai’s concern. He starts to twist it around in various directions, looking to see if it has any teeth marks. Meanwhile, Steven silently calls to Lion so as to not enter the kitchen when he starts to head to it, and Lion calmly moves over to sit close to him.

Mordecai moves over to his booth to take a closer look at the instrument, and Skips and Pops soon follow. “Weird,” Mordecai remarks as he observes its array of buttons with different labels for different instruments, background sounds, and “special effects”, and a simulated metronome for the rhythm. A screen in the top middle displays a homorhythm, designed to play and organize the different sounds and notes as they are organized. It possesses so many “additional” buttons it almost looks like a toy. In fact, Skips figures, it probably is a toy. He guesses that they’ll see how it sounds.

“Huh,” Mordecai produces a small chuckle, staring at the opportunity in his very hands. “How’d you get this idea?” he asks in rising interest.

“Eh,” Amethyst shrugs. “I know two guys…” She looks over to Steven, who is grinning widely in happiness as he watches.

Mordecai raises a finger up. “Alright, guys,” he scans the keyboard instrument once more, searching for the right button. “Let’s do this.”

[He presses the button on the keyboard that enables the metronome, and produces a consistent beat.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxmFohOvuYA)

He starts to crank up the sound with the keyboard’s special effects, and the sound used for the background is settled in place. With two fingers, Mordecai starts to play an iconic tune he and Rigby recognized all their lives. They start to grin widely at how well and loud enough it sounds to them, and Skips and Pops stare in slight awe. The music sounds different, more contemporary, but they know it’s the same song they’ve enjoyed a long time ago. He started singing a melody, also slightly different, but all too familiar for him.

“Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk I’m a woman’s man…”

He sings at his casual own tone, nothing too high or too low. He starts to move around the booth, tapping the rhythm with his foot while still singing and playing. He gets up from the booth, followed by Rigby, and with the keyboard in a single arm, they both start to walk close to the booth, their feet matching the rhythm with each step.

They both then crank up the familiar chorus in harmony. Rigby joins him in singing the chorus, in his own way. He ends up shouting the “ha, ha, ha, ha”s in a small shrill, but nobody seems to mind.

Amethyst looks on in satisfaction at this performance. She had expected something more rock-like, but she very much enjoys this as well. She starts to bop her head, and watches as Skips, Pops, and even Steven gets in on the rhythm. The music also manages to catch the attention of Penny and Anais, and they turn their heads towards it. At the kitchen, Gumball and Darwin stomp a single foot to the rhythm as they begin to finish their meals in a much calmer fashion.

Mordecai temporarily stops the metronome, and gives the song’s electronic sound a more space-like atmosphere. As the keyboard’s trumpet instruments play peacefully, Amethyst soon, and harshly, climbs to the booth in a silent giggle. As if the room’s light had turned violet, and a correspondently colored spotlight shines on her, Amethyst moves and twists her body somewhat gracefully, and flips her hair around to the sounds of the trumpets. Steven continues to watch excitedly from the sidelines, but Penny and Anais exit their booth to take a closer look, Penny starting to smile.

The beat starts back again in full swing. Still staring on top of the booth, Amethyst switches to her usual “nightclub” dance moves, but refrains in showing off too much at the moment. This time, Amethyst chooses to join in on the chorus, hitting higher notes than Mordecai and Rigby had done before, still dancing in the booth as all three sing. Now Mordecai cranks up the higher notes in the keyboard, both he and Rigby approaching closer towards the table with each of the song’s ‘ha, ha, ha, ha’s. They sit with their backs against the table and Amethyst lies on her stomach. This culminates in the song’s last words, sung by all three of them.

“Stayin’ Aliiiive!”

As the song reaches his end, Mordecai takes a moment to play the remaining tones with satisfaction and a lack of pain in his back, and finally stops.

Skips, Pops, Penny, Anais, and Steven immediately clap and whistle and whoop loudly, along with some laughs. In the midst of it, Mordecai and Rigby look up at a smirking Amethyst. Her eyelids are drooped again, and shoots them both a thumbs up, winking with her visible eye. From that point forward, Mordecai and Rigby now start to truly admire her.

The kitchen doors suddenly swing open. Gumball stands tall, with one hand behind his back with the tray served forward in the other, filled with fries, hot dogs, and some bowls of salads with chicken. Darwin stands behind him with a similar proud pose. They are both still filthy with food, but it doesn’t matter to them.

Gumball grins widely. “Lunch, is served!”

The room is filled with relieved sighs and anticipation, and in the case of Amethyst, very hungry growls. Mordecai chuckles and stands up to reach out and grab the tray. But as he is about to turn around, he looks into it, and his face suddenly twist into a look of confusion and mild revulsion. This prompts the others to take a look themselves, and with the exception of Amethyst, they proceed to cry in disgust and disappointment.

Gumball’s eyes widen in intense worry, and his grin disappears completely. “W-what…?” Gumball immediately pulls the tray close to him from Mordecai’s hands and takes a closer look. He gasps in horror at the small turquoise paint flakes scattered along the food. His work, ruined.

“AWW, *hmp*, NOOO!” Gumball cries out in annoyance in exasperation, harshly shoving the tray back in Mordecai’s hands and turns away. With a short whimper halfway in Gumball’s voice, Steven notices a hint of fear and sadness in it. Gumball hunches over, facing away from the table, and fully expecting a bigger wave of disappointment and scorn directed at him. Steven, Darwin, Penny, and Anais see this, and look on in worry and sympathy, unsure of what to say or what would happen.

But everyone stays quiet in thought. Mordecai and Rigby look at each other, then at an unsure Pops and Skips, who simply shrugs. Amethyst’s gaze, however, is fixed on the ruined food in a predator-like manner. With the lack of response from everyone else, she eyes the tray before she steps off the table and makes a short lunge.

Amethyst grabs the tray from Mordecai, and looks at the others and with hunger in her smile. “Well if you guys aren’t gonna eat that, can I have it?” Before anyone could answer, she tilts the tray to herself and pours all the contents onto her mouth, gorging herself noisily on them. Some of the food lands on the floor, and Amethyst picks it up to continue gorging. Gumball looks up at her and wrinkles his nose and lips, while the others feel like gagging slightly. She walks away to a different seat as she proceeds to try to finish chewing the amount of food she couldn’t have fit normally, and trying to hold it back with her hands.

“I’ll give you this,” Amethyst calls out on the distance with her mouth full in Gumball’s direction, and starting to suck her fingers. “It’s super good.

Gumball’s lower eyelids rise, too disgusted to fully take the compliment. Mordecai scrunches his “lips” as he looks in a mixture of disgust and admiral at Amethyst’s behavior. He turns to look at Gumball and his face softens, but not before Gumball avoids eye contact again, with his ears flat against his head and his arms crossed.

“Well,” Mordecai croaks as he walks over and crouches at Gumball’s eye-level, despite him facing away. “It’s alright. It was an accident,” he says gently. “Don’t worry about it. It sucks but, yeah, we can make some more.”

“Y-yeah… You, you think you can try it again?” Rigby asks kindly, but in a small teeth-grating shrill underneath, showing signs of impatience and disappointment, but doesn’t raise his voice in complaint as much as he can.

“Hey,” Mordecai calls a little louder and taps Gumball’s shoulder, but still kind, bringing Gumball’s attention to him. He sees Mordecai looking at him in the most sincere, friendliest face he’s put on in a long time since arriving at the tower. “You want us to help you or what?”

All the wrinkled, scornful lines in Gumball’s face vanish, and his eyes light up. Though he doesn’t smile, the shine in his eyes turn to diamonds, much to Steven’s silent, yet squeaky, mouth covered joy.

“Ah, uh…” his voice creaks, and mumbles under his breath as he lowers his head and puts on a faint puppy face. “…‘Kay, yeah.”

He walks ahead towards the kitchen again, a little unsure how else to react. Darwin and Penny give him a supporting smile as they walk next to him. Mordecai and Anais walk behind, soon to be followed by Skips, and Pops.

Steven watches all of this. He sees how easily Amethyst brought a sense of happiness when he wasn’t exactly viable to do so at the moment, and did so in her own way. He would want to talk to her about that later, to congratulate her. He sees how when it comes to help and bringing joy, he isn’t alone, and sometimes he doesn’t have to try. Slowly, he tries to think about just what is it that Gumball, and everyone else, truly needs. Steven leaves Lion and enters the kitchen to help, as well.


	7. Hurry Up, He's Dreaming

 

Garnet sees the setting sun in a west window at the hall in floor 20. A giant, black spot shaped like a heart decorates most of the sun’s surface.

After a more well-suited lunch, the park crew has made an effort to restore at least one hotel room, so the children can sleep. Penny and Anais had gone ahead to the hotel walls to see how the room was going as the crew rapidly, almost frantically, walked past them as they worked. The other kids waited in the lobby rather impatiently. The hotel room had been dusted off of the dirt, been sanitized, and fixed as quickly as possible, expecting to have it complete by dusk. The hotel room is at the farthest side of the east of the tower, so the children can be awakened by the sun with the heart spot in it through the window as it rose. At one point, Skips had walked past Steven, Gumball, and Darwin, and peeked outside the broken entrance, uncaring of the rubble and glass around him as well as the cold breeze, to look at the setting sun.

“That’s one heck of a sunspot,” he once commented half-jokingly.

Earlier during lunch, Pearl had arrived at the restaurant to see how everybody’s been doing, as well as apologize for getting upset. Steven assured her there was no problem, but requested that he see the map, to get information of the restaurant. It was at that point, that Steven saw another new helpful explanation when he looked at the map again: every edible condiment and ingredient is multiversally made to accommodate the biological needs of beings of different universes and the contents are stocked infinitely, always fresh. Regardless of the world where they originated from, the food was always digestible for every toon. Having been assured of this, and the self-sanitizing restaurant, Steven proceeds to help make a batch of hot dogs, and some sandwiches for himself. He enjoyed them, after all, he’s felt like he has gone a whole day without eating.

A whole day.

He realizes this just now, as he walks along with the other kids towards the storage room where Pops had called them forward from the hall that led to the storage room. He doesn’t think even Gem missions with him lasted this long. His dad is probably, or definitely, worried sick by now. Should he come back now? But still, he is curious to what lies ahead. He looks ahead to find Pops at the door, kneeling in front of a dark grey box looking as childishly ecstatic as ever, and excited to have the kids come. All three stand in silence, Steven is restless in worry and having a small bout of anxiety over not being home, and Gumball looks at Pops sarcastically.

“Children, could you please take a look at this peculiar object I found?” he requests. Gumball then notices Pops is wearing a bigger, sillier, more colorful top hat, filled with red and white stripes and green polka dots. He frowns slightly at the ridiculousness of it, combined with Pops’ overly playful smile.

“Come,” Pops directs at Steven, noticing the boy’s discontent. “Try it, it’ll be fun.”

Steven calms himself down, and starts to head forward. Pops stands up to let Steven through and walks back. Steven kneels curiously in front of the box. He hums and swallows a bit of too much spit in his mouth as he stares into the dark, black hole at the top of the box, unable to make out anything from the darkness, not even in the hall’s light. He turns back questioningly at Pops and a skeptical Gumball.

“Go on, child!” Pops calls. “Put your hand inside and see what you pull out.”

Steven curiously turns back to the box. Seemingly without hesitation, he puts his hand inside the hole. As he feels nothing but the hard and fuzzy texture of the rims of the box’s hole, he soon reaches further, until his whole arm is inside. He lights up when he feels some fabric in his palm, grips it, and quickly pulls out his arm in calm anticipation. Steven looks at what he pulled out from the box; a white cozy hat shaped like the head of a bear, with round ears at the top and straps at the bottom to place around the head. He stares in awe at it with starry eyes, and immediately tucks his head inside and pulls the straps around his chin.

Gumball and Darwin’s eyebrows raise in subdued, yet ecstatic surprise, and Pops breaks into high giggles upon seeing him. “Oh, you look positively delightful!” he cheers. He then turns to an even more skeptical Gumball. “It’s a box that produces silly hats of your liking!” He claps enthusiastically. He turns toward Gumball and Darwin. “Go on! Reach in! I’d love to see what you look like in those hats!”

“Pops, hey, c’mere!” Mordecai calls out at the end of the hall. Pops emits a little ‘ooh?’ sound before standing up, his attention now caught on an entirely different priority. The other kids watch as he disappears from the hall along with Mordecai. Steven then feels himself distracted as he feels the fuzziness of his hat and the ears, producing a cheeky and joyful smirk and more starry eyes, easing his worries.

Gumball scoffs. “Least he’s gone, I don’t have to be babied like this,” he mutters as he reaches towards the box along with Darwin.

“Hope it doesn’t look too colorful,” Gumball comments off-handedly. He laughs to himself as he reaches down the hole and rummages freely. “‘Cuz, y’know, I’ve been havin’ some drama with lucky hats…” unwilling to tell the whole story, he pulls his arm away to look at what he grabbed. His laughter immediately ceases, and is followed by a wordless squeak of revulsion. His widened, incredulous eyes stared at a dumb-looking red gnome hat in his hand.

“Well, this doesn’t look lucky,” he snarks snootily. Gumball quickly puts it on before he lets himself think too much on it. The hole of the coned hat is slightly larger than his already huge head. Only half his eyes peek from underneath the hat, giving his face the appearance of a dopey scowl. He scoffs again, but his mind draws blank. “…Yeah.”

Darwin can’t help but snicker, bringing his fins to his mouth as his cheeks start puffing from from the held in laughter. Gumball starts to groan and grimace, which only served to pull the hat further down and obscure his eyesight. Gumball growls and pulls the hat back up in annoyance. Rather than reaching his fin down the hole, Darwin grabs the top of the box with both arms, and does a quick handstand, sticking the entire top of his head (body?) into the hole. He squirms slightly, before popping out of the hole with a grunt and sitting on the floor. He curiously reaches his fins up to feel at what he has on his head. He feels a kind of cool, round glassy surface, and reaching further, he sees something strange protruding from the front.

“Oh, so this counts as a hat now,” Darwin remarks in a doubtful tone, not quite as a question. He has a mere teapot on his head.

Now it’s Gumball’s turn to snicker, but this time he doesn’t hide it. Though he normally would have reacted in scorn, Darwin still ends up grinning and his voice rises in chuckles. Gumball’s humor is contagious, and it’s difficult to stay mad at someone with a hat like that. Even Steven smirks a little bit at the increasing giggles. Gumball turns to him with a wide, happy grin. “You have a bear on your head,” he comments between giggles. Steven then begins to burst into more giggles himself, until the entire corner is filled with laughter.

“Hey!” Rigby calls as he slides into view at the end of the hall, interrupting their laughter. They all turn their heads towards him attentively. “Hey, dudes, your rooms are ready. You can go sleep in beds there now.” Upon this statement, the kids continue to stare for a few moments before responding.

****

Gumball and Darwin then look at each other in a mash of excitement and relief at finding somewhere to sleep, but Steven finds himself a little stunned. Bed? Already? Are they going to sleep here? Hoo boy. As usual, Gumball and Darwin speed up from the hall at near lightning speed, leaving him behind. Steven is led to handle his uneasiness by himself as he gets up, takes the hat off his head and holds it, and starts to jog from the hall to the pillars in the center, looking up for a moment to try to take a look at the Gems but is unable to find them. After all, the hearty sun continues to be worth their attention.

As he runs to the stairs in the guest room with where he guesses he’ll sleep, Steven stops near the entrance facing south. The twilight in the setting sun on the right side gives the horizon a dash of, magenta, dark purple with nearing dark blues blues and then pitch blacks. Judging by some images he saw on his phone, he could swear it looks like somebody had stroked the sky with paintbrushes. He stands in curious silence, face blank as the landscape changes color while the sun sets, followed by small and yellow five-pointed stars. They are not vast balls of gas millions of lightyears away dimly perceived by a human eye, as Pearl had described, simply cartoonish little five pointed stars, which Steven figures the Crystal Gems would find simultaneously fascinating and disappointing.

“Hey! Over here!” Skips calls out from the stairs. Steven takes one quick glance at the sky before running off to where he is called. Skips then proceeds to lead him to the hallway where the room is located, at the penultimate hall close to the door that leads to the sloped path and the Rooms the Gems still work on. Skips leads him further down the path and passing by several tattered rooms until they reach a clean, polished, wooden door at the very end in the left wall. Mordecai and Rigby lean against the wall in front, and Pops watches on. Skips steps back and offers Steven to open the door to the room. He curiously twists the new knob, and opens the door with a lack of a creak. He is greeted by a small hallway, with a closet to its right, leading to a couple of beds at the very end with a generic-looking painting of a portal.

Steven stares in bright joy when he finds Pearl inside right in front of the painting, her hands clasped in a welcoming pose.

“Hello, Steven!” she greets cheerfully, extending her arms. “This is where you and your friends will be sleeping for the night. I trust that you will like it here! Now, I will brief you on some of the things you’ll be needing for your stay.”

As Pearl explains, Steven takes the time to watch his surroundings. He looks down to see the carpeted floor being much cleaner than before, and sees shades of red and dark orange decorating it. The room itself is colored in various shades of red through light yellow. In the bed farther from the window, at the left of the painting, he could see that Gumball had tossed his gnome hat at the foot of the bed he is now lazily plopped and splayed on. He sees Steven, and lets out a long satisfied sigh and splays his body a little further than his limbs would normally allow, clearly indicating the bed to be his. Meanwhile, Steven sees Lion snoozing on the foot of the other bed, another clear indicator to whose bed that one belongs to. At the corner in front of that bed sits a round table with an illuminated lamp.

At the window, Darwin holds his teapot tucked on his arm and stares out the window as the sky darkens completely, and the false stars twinkle brighter. A strange, bright, white moon reflects on his wide-open eyes.

Next to Gumball’s bed is a half-open door that leads to an adjacent room. Steven peeks inside, and sees another bed, with Penny sitting calmly and looking up at him. Steven pulls back, and sees that directly in front of the window lies a small kitchen. To its right, there is a couple of sinks, as well as another door that leads to an adjacent bathroom. Steven then turns to actually pay attention to Pearl.

“—and over here there are sinks with some toothpaste and various different toothbrushes, all arranged by color, which you can use for your oral health. Yours is the red one, the cat’s is the blue one, the orange one is for the fish, the rabbit’s is pink, and the yellow one is for the flying creature.”

“We have names, you know,” Gumball creaks in a somewhat sarcastic tone, unmoving from his spot. Pearl looks away from Gumball and back at Steven in a mixture of mild embarrassment under a blank expression.

“…Now, then, over here,” she gestures towards the closet at the small hall towards the door. “Is where your night wear’s located. All the pajamas over here come from all sizes, so you should be able to find one that fits you.” She gives Steven some room to step forward to try to take a closer look at the closet. Meanwhile, she cups her hands again. “Alright, now, Steven, if you ever need anything, I believe you know where to find us, or the others.” Concluding with her explanation, Pearl heads for the door out of the room with some satisfaction.

“Hey, Pearl, wait!” Steven shouts, and she turns around curiously. He points towards the window. “What do you think of the sky? Does it look spacey to you?”

“Spacey…?” She leans forward to look at the window, where Darwin still stands in a bewildered trance. She raised one sole eyebrow in slight bewilderment herself. “Well then… that’s not very… realistic. I could even say that’s almost insulting. I do, however, wish we could take a closer look at this, but… we’ve already had too much distractions this afternoon. The geography of this world really caught our interests, but we still have much work to do.” Pearl finally turns to leave, not wanting to stay behind schedule and concluding that this room won’t let the noise from the construction reach them. Before stepping out the door, Pearl looks at him warmly. “Have a nice evening, Steven.”

“Good night, Pearl!” Steven chirps happily as he watches Pearl exit. He turns towards the closet to look for pajamas, but before he could open the closet, Gumball zooms by him and nearly knocks Steven into the wall. Gumball enters the closet, and changes himself right there right away. He once again, zooms over to his bed and gets comfortable, wearing a two-piece, yellow striped pajamas with his size. Not knowing how to react, Steven moves over to the closet himself. He silently changes into some red striped pajamas. He grabs the folded map he has kept in his pocket and keeps in in his grasp, and exits the closet, humming to ease the quietness of the room. He places the map on one of the pillows of his bed, not taking the time to look at it.

As he brushes his teeth, he notices that Darwin had quickly snapped out of his trance, taken off his shoes and leaving them on the table, and is now filling his teapot with the water from the sink next to him.

“Hey, look, I’m making my own bowl!” Darwin chirps randomly. Steven cracks a little smile at that as he watches him carry the teapot over to the table, spilling some drops of water into the carpeted floor. But as he sits on the bed, Steven soon drifts into concern again as he feels his heart race.

“Hey, Darwin,” Steven says somewhat nervously, and Darwin tilts his body in response. “We’ve been out for a whole day, don’t you think anyone in your world should be worried by now?”

At first he doesn’t register, and blinks once.  “Well, maybe Mom would—” Suddenly, his eyes turn to dots and his smile loses mirth, and his words produce wheezed squeaks. “Mom,” his whole face shatters like glass, revealing a horrified, twitchy-eyed, twisted expression. “Oh my gosh, you’re right!” he screams, nearly tipping over the pot. Steven reels back in shock. Darwin starts to scream periodically, and feels the urge to get down from the table and run. “GUMBALL!! GUMBALL!! MOM’S GONNA KILL US IF WE’RE NOT HOME!!! DO SOMETHING!!!”

“I think mom can wait a little longer,” Gumball quips. Steven and Darwin look in confusion at a dismissive Gumball, lying down with his arms behind his head and his eyes are closed.

“What?” Darwin questions.

“But I thought you wanted to leave the most when we first got here, if I remember,” Steven continues to looks at Gumball doubtfully.

Gumball stretches his arm indifferently. “Yeah, I know, but I’m getting some good vibes right now from this place.” Gumball starts to grin in pleasure. “Nothing’s wrong. There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll be fine here. We should stay.”

Darwin starts to stare in horror at Gumball’s behavior, and gasps loudly. “Oh, no, this whole place is a LOTUS-EATER MACHINE!” Darwin shrieks, startling Steven and Gumball. “We’re getting mind-controlled into staying for some kind of nefarious purpose! AAAEEEEK!!” he frantically grabs the lamp from the table, and starts hitting himself in the head with it with loud clangs. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

Steven cringes as Darwin’s face begins to bruise from the hitting, while Gumball just stares irritatingly, and almost furiously, but in a small sense of concern underneath.

“Would you please calm down?” Anais half commands and half begs as she stands on the door leading to her and Penny’s room, with Penny accompanying her. “Look, I know this is probably going to bring problems at home, but I’m pretty sure we’re not being mind controlled for some ‘evil’ purpose. I think I would know.”

Penny turns to stare at Anais as she makes her way into the bed. “Ah, but…” she mutters, before leaning against the doorframe in indifference. No point in trying to argue against her pretentiousness. In seconds, she gulps, takes a deep breath, and makes a small, doubtful statement, directed towards the other boys. “Is Darwin seriously implying that this is all a dream?”

Gumball’s eyes turn to dots in shock, now understanding what his brother meant, and Darwin starts to shiver. “…Wow, that makes sense,” Gumball says in sincerity. Steven’s worries subtly start up again. But deep down, he doesn’t believe that. It couldn’t be. Tried as he might, he came up with an explanation that he can reasonably allow his conscience to be at ease.

“Hang on, guys, I don’t think this is a dream,” Steven tries to deduce. “Think about it! I mean, it’s pretty comprehensive. Nothing really doesn’t make sense like normal dreams. Normal dreams are way weirder.”

There is a moment of silence. “Well, lemme ask you…” Gumball says in a somewhat somber and pensive tone, much to Anais’s subtle surprise. He points towards the moon in the window. “Does any of this make sense to you? Is that not weird enough for ya?”

Steven opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, he grips the sheets of his bed, and his other hand strokes the map. For a moment, he contemplates on looking at it, to see what’s next in store for them as he is wondering, but he finds himself sighing deeply in exhaustion instead. Steven lets out a long, drawn yawn, and he starts to blink slowly. At this moment, a small thought occurs to him.

“But you don’t feel tired in dreams, do you?”

There is no response, as it is now Gumball’s turn to ponder. Darwin joins his brother on the pondering. Gumball blinks more frequently, breathing and his head starts to lull slightly as he leans it against his palm, his other kneading the blanket. Moments later, Gumball yawns just as loudly, but Darwin remains wide awake for the most part, only occasionally blinking slowly.

“Yeah,” he smacks his lips nonchalantly, nearly forgetting what he was thinking about. “I guess you’re right about that.” He pulls the covers from his bed and starts to snuggle between them. “Don’t worry about anything right now, dude.” He lets out an exhausted sigh, and he starts to mumble. “Good, night, please.”

Darwin hums doubtfully, but chirps up again. “Okay, good night!” he turns off the light from the lamp, the room now being illuminated by the strange moon. He immediately puts his feet to the teapot and crawls inside. He spills some water on the table and tries to squeeze his big body inside like a balloon. He submerges his body, but in a short moment, his foot awkwardly pops out of the spout. Darwin proceeds to sigh sadly, and he goes to sleep regardless. From the door to the girls’ bedroom, they shout ‘Good night’, one being slightly more tired and gentle than the other.

Steven lets out one final yawn. “Okay, then,” he says tiredly. He takes a deep breath. “Good night everyone.” He snuggles under the bedsheets as he starts to get comfortable. The map in his hand starts to go underneath the sheets. He’ll worry about it in the morning, but he’s too tired right now. He thinks he HAS been on longer missions before, and his dad didn't’t seem to mind. He can’t think straight as his mind slowly drifts into slumber. In the tower, the act of sleep is a peculiar experience.

Hours later, Steven finally enters REM, a state in which leaves his mind more open to the tower and it’s environment. The light from the moon bearing a gigantic, black exclamation point on its surface shines through the window at its brightest.

And he drifts further to his slumber

to feel sand in his inner ear.

Sand that is colored in all shades of blue.

He tilts his head, and it pours it all out.

[Then he hears a singing voice.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h7WI3rRXME)

The voice is singing a mysterious tune

with clipping and glitches between each verse

But so full of wonder, and curious in tone.

The tower itself, seemed to sing a song.

He wanders in the desert

attentive to the voice

which guides him ahead

to a single door

and a portal appears

in its entrance.

He hears guitars now

and the tone shifts,

and he starts to walk ahead

slowly and steady

in the rippling solid walls,

like liquid underneath.

Passing through a sideways door,

he looks down at the ceiling

and up to the floor.

In the ceiling there is light,

that drips from a lamp,

a yellow bulb, in liquid form

dripping upwards, into the black.

He stares at the vast void,

with a curious mind, he jumps up.

In the space he’s floating, and forms words in his head.

He sings to himself a song of sleep.

He sings to himself about his head,

as his body moves through the black mass,

and further up into to the stars,

glitters of light which flow in the air.

His body goes through them, and wildly they fly.

The lights now bring color,

cyans, and light purples in a swirling flow

and through the flow they form shapes.

They form spheres and dusty gusts

to make planets, and swirls

and more masses of stars.

An image forms in the vast mass of stars.

An image of somebody whom he knows well.

His mind soon tells him how much he longs

for her to see the wonders of dreams.

The weirdness, the mystery, the curiosity,

the world that he’s in, the world of the tower’s.

A white stripe passes through,

and he still wonders.

More stripes pass through,

so he looks up.

White and black stripes move in a spiral

in all the starry and vast blackened void.

The spirals grow smaller the further it deepens.

Mesmerizing, hypnotic, and strange

strangely enough, just like a portal.

And he’s

squeezed tight.

Good Night.

The light passes through Steven’s eyelids in a reddish hue, as the sunlight shines through the window in the new morning of his stay in the tower. He flutters his eyes open, and he can faintly see the illuminated room, shined by the sun with the heart on it. Steven’s rest well, but he feels as if he can’t seem to open his eyes all the way. The combination of sunshine, and a rather turbulent night’s sleep has left him in a combination of joy, peace, and emptiness, unable to process a proper, congruent and clear reaction from his nightly dream. He remembers everything, vividly. As if he never fell asleep, and was merely transported somewhere else. Come to think of it, the original portal had appeared on the foot of his own bed back home.

Steven starts to look around the room, noting that Lion is no longer in the room, Darwin is no longer in the teapot, and presumably Penny and Anais have left as well. The peaceful moment within his mind passes when he sees a look of disturbed revulsion on Gumball’s face as he sits up in his own bed. Gumball stares at him wide awake, with his cheeks swollen to drown out a wordless scream. Steven opens his eyes wider, unsure how to respond.

“Tell me you had a weird dream,” Gumball begs, exhaling the scream that never came out, “like a really, REALLY weird dream. Like…” he tries to gesture in between his pleads. “…an alien dream…”

Steven squirts in confusion, and looks away from Gumball as he starts to recall. “I, uh… yeah, kind of… definitely,” he says sluggishly. He blinks. “I, uh…” he then suddenly and frantically pulls the covers from his bed and starts to feel around the mattress with his hands. He brightens up when he feels some paper, and quickly grasps it. He opens it up to find what else it has to say to him, regarding the dreams. In the spot on the map where his room is located, he finds something. He reads it aloud.

“Why should the fun stop at bedtime? You can still play in your dreams! This dimension’s atmosphere has all the dreaming properties to induce otherworldly experiences upon entering the REM cycle, to ensure elaborate dreams literally out of your world! You could say it would feel as if you’re traveling in verse instead of prose, but don’t take our word for it!”

Gumball starts to heave audibly. “So you’re tellin’ me that this place gets into our heads??!” Gumball grabs his lower eyelids and stretches them all the way down to his chin, grunting anxiously. “And we’re breathin’ that—” His eyelids and his eyeballs soon snap back into place like rubber, and Gumball pulls his head back from the recoil and slight sting. Steven almost feels his own eyeballs pop out his face upon witnessing this act, as he disturbingly reaches to stroke his undereyes with a fingertip. But upon noticing Gumball’s anxious state, he inhales through his nose, and reaches out to him.

“Are you feeling okay?” Steven asks kindly. “Do you wanna go home?”

Gumball almost yells out in frustration. “I don’t even know! I don’t know how to feel! All I wanna know is this place’s deal! But I don’t wanna worry! And I don’t wanna feel like I’m being watched! I…” he gets up from the bed and tries to stretch his tense back all the the way down with some cracking noises. With some minor squeaks of pain, he tries to calm himself with little avail.

Steven looks at him in sympathy and understanding. He gets out of his own bed and walks over to Gumball. Though he has his own worries, he chooses to try to ease Gumball’s. “Well, there’s a lot of weird things around here. Remember when we first saw each other? You thought I was really weird, but then you got to know me better, and then the other way around! I know that if we stay, we can still find some really cool things. There’s still plenty of stuff to see around here.”

Gumball looks at him in doubt. Steven decides to make himself clearer, and shoots him a very warm look, with a glassy texture in his eyes. “If you really want to know everything, do you think you’ll stay?”

Gumball swallows a little and sighs deeply. He turns his head and catches a glimpse of the hearty sun, then looks at Steven’s map. “…I think…I… wanna stick around ‘till the end,” he starts to make the tiniest of smirks. “I wanna see more. As much as I want to. Then I’ll feel better leaving.” With that out of his chest, Gumball sighs in exasperation, then starts to walk. “You know…” he begins to head for the closet door to change back into his clothes. “You’re good.”

Steven smiles at the compliment. Gumball is right, they should still stick around for a while longer, and he’ll deal with what happens at home, if it happens. Though at this point, he starts to wonder why the map hasn’t covered any of that particularly sensitive information when he needs it. Should he specifically ask for it? Maybe the map will give him the answers when he spends a reasonable amount of fun in this strange land. Maybe he’ll finally be at ease once the refurbishment is complete and he gets to see what the tower really has in store. Maybe if they got to see the main tower’s attraction…

“Maybe I should get the Gems to hurry up,” he says, as he heads to the closet to change back into his own clothes quickly as Gumball begins to exit the hotel room. He tucks the map back into his pocket and begins to head towards the door straight to the hallway.

As they begin to run upon exiting, Gumball makes a cocky, yet confident smirk. “Call me crazy, but I think I’ve got a few tips for them in mind…”


	8. Industrial Strength

That morning, Gumball ran out a few moments ago from the ballroom with a grin on his face, without even finishing breakfast. His grin bared nearly all his teeth, and the rest of his face twisted upwards in a teasing gleam. His eyes showed a crescent shape, almost seconds away from twisting into a more naturally feline shape, but still showing a hint of happiness with small diamonds reflecting in his pupils. Darwin followed close behind to keep him in in check, slightly concerned, but feeling a hint of cheeriness. The other kids, along with Lion, watch as they bolt out the door, not intending to follow them or even attempt to participate on whatever it was they had in mind.

Earlier, Gumball had asked Steven about the Gems, not to the extent of serious personal information, but important to him nevertheless. Not knowing any better at the moment, Steven had told him everything Gumball needed to know, and each fact had provided more fuel for the machinery powering his growing smirk. “Are you sure you wanna give him that information?” Anais had asked in a somewhat deadpan manner, as Gumball thanked him and got up from his seat and urged Darwin to accompany him. “Gumball’s got his ways…” But whatever trouble Anais figured might be brewing, it was already too late to stop it.

The Gems continue to work on the Rooms at a slow pace. With a nasal sigh, Amethyst taps the tip of her foot onto the steel beam from the 24th floor, producing a faint metallic percussion. Garnet installs the beams as much as the chasm’s walls would allow her, edging at the 36th floor, where the isolated Portal Room lies away from the chasm, and therefore the rest of the Rooms. She occasionally stops to bask in on the unnatural sunlight, feeling an almost tangible energy and matter radiating through. Pearl stands on another beam in the 14th floor, silently pondering the structure in an attempt to make sense of the mathematical absurdity she had forced herself to conform to, fidgeting her hands as she tries to add up. The beams are close to completion, now only a matter of time before the Gems continue with the construction of the Rooms proper.

Amethyst disinterestedly stomps on the beam with more force, hearing it produce louder metallic beats. She continues to stomp a single foot, then gradually stomps on both feet with her toes and heels, finding some kind of rhythm. The metals echo across the chasm in an odd concept of music. Amethyst can see Pearl getting annoyed with her nonsensical symphony as she slowly turns her head to glare at her from below. Amethyst groans and sits quietly as she listens to the echoes of the last stomp. Had things been over and done with, she would’ve stopped a long time ago, and continued to hang out with those guys again. Too bad they were busy with fixing the lounge at the east side of the building.

Pearl looks back down, and quietly mumbles to herself how she can’t afford any more interruptions and annoyances, when she hears the patter of rapid paws and shoes in the hall coming from the door of the floor she is in.

Gumball comes bursting through one of the doors. All the Gems react in alarm, with Amethyst and Pearl nearly reaching towards their gems by instinct. Upon seeing who it is, they immediately sigh in a mix of relief and exasperation. Gumball sports a wide-eyed, but otherwise unreadable expression, with his cheeks puffed out and his mouth in a straight line.

Pearl tries not to raise her voice. “I…I’m sorry, but I believe we made clear not to interfere this time…”

“Yeah, yeah I know,” he says casually and blinks, holding his hands up. “But Steven told me you had to hurry. We’re getting freaked out here, and we really wanna see how this is gonna look. You know. So we can actually have fun here.” He spouts the last line with a hint of smug spite, and a slow-forming smirk.

Pearl starts to huff, displeased with this creature’s tone, but tries to remain polite. “Well, young… child-cat, as you can see we are trying our best to construct this as fast as possible.”

Gumball crosses his arms in a pout. “Well, it doesn’t look like you’re trying enough, right?” he puffs out.

Pearl, increasingly agitated, forces herself to hold back a frown, let alone lose her patience. But does this creature even know who― what he is dealing with?

“Now, listen here—” she starts to raise her voice in a scolding tone as she walks alongside the steel beam towards the door. Gumball dons a quick, smirking gleam and simply slams the door before she could even try to reach it. Pearl stops in her tracks, but before she has a chance to react, another door in the 27th floor flings open in front of Amethyst’s position, and Gumball appears.

“Whoa!” Amethyst exclaims and reels back, nearly losing her balance. She and Pearl find themselves catching their breath in their throats.

“Wha-ah— oh?” Pearl stammers.

“Hey! How’d you do that?!” Amethyst asks in excitement and confusion, her voice nearly close to squeaking.

Gumball chuckles to himself in pride. “Well, it’s simple,” he brings his hands to his face, and makes jazz hands. “I’m ‘fayst’.” He slams the door again, and almost immediately pops up at the door in the floor where Pearl is standing again, leaning against the frame in a smug look. “I learned a lot from Steven, I mean, aren’t you supposed to be fast too?”

Pearl’s pupils shrink, and metaphorically gulps in bewilderment with a small spark of anger within her Gem. Each and each time, Pearl finds herself losing more of her composure. Her nostrils start to flare up, and her brows show signs of wrinkling and twisting downwards. Notably, she forces herself to smile, while her eyes and brows are lopsided upwards in a mixture of anger and confusion. At the mention of Gumball knowing possible things and watching what he is doing, Amethyst takes a closer look at Pearl in subdued amusement, her head tilted.

“*Ahem*” Pearl imitates composure and forced friendliness, yet her teeth nearly grit as she talks. “To give you an, um, idea we ARE fast, yes,” she inhales uselessly and struggles to raise a scolding finger up. “BUT— we can’t possibly rush this process. We need to make sure this building’s infrastructure is stable enough, so when you start bouncing and running around, or whatever it is that you do, you. DON’T collapse into the ground and die. Do you understand that, cat child?”

All the while, Gumball has his eyes rolled and he moves his fingers up and down in a ‘blah, blah, blah’ gesture. “Yeah, I get that you’ve gotta be Serious and Ultra Boring and slow about it. Maybe in YOUR world, that’s how stuff’s supposed to go —feel bad for you, by the way. But not here! Look at me! You can do ANYTHING here, and being slow and boring isn’t doing anything. I’m not seein’ a lot of progress here, dudes!” He leans against the doorframe again, and lifts up a finger condescendingly. “And we STILL have names, you know!”

Pearl absentmindedly finds herself huffing and stomping her foot in sheer aggravation (and losing her balance in a split-second; a deplorable act on her part) and grumbling under her breath. “Oh, please!” Her voice is is raised in  annoyance, creating small echoes across the chasm. The sounds catch Garnet’s attention, and she looks down, wearing no expression in her face other than a single brow lowered underneath her shades.

Amethyst smiles and shoots Gumball a wink. He chuckles mischievously as he disappears behind the door again. He proceeds to quickly pop up in as many doors as he can, creating mocking gestures as the door slams echo across the chasm. Amethyst is thoroughly amused.

“Ha, ha! Yeah, c’mon, Pearl!” Amethyst stifles a number of chuckles as the chaos subtly unfolds, and Pearl is nearly driven up the wall by the time she looks at her. “Just call ‘im by his name and maybe he’ll stop bothering ya! Pfft—”

Gumball starts to laugh as he stops at the 22nd floor to compose himself as he nearly collapses laughing. He pulls his hand back and gives Darwin a high-five behind his back as his laughter subsides slightly. He could do this all day, which is what he had precisely had in mind.

But as he throws his head back to laugh some more, he looks up to find Garnet looking down straight at him. In an almost literal manner, he feels that she stares straight through him. His throat dries at an exaggerated rate, no other sound managing to escape his mouth other than a squeaky, dry wheeze cutting off his laughter. He turns pale and his eyes nearly bug out of his head as nervousness overtakes him, and he feels himself losing air. He loses his balance, prompting Darwin to grab him by his sweater, and Gumball is left leaning forward at the edge in a half-daze, sweaty, and lost of the cool he acquired moments ago.

Pearl picks up on this. Her eyes squint slightly as she finally works out a retaliatory remark. “Hmmmm, you don’t seem very confident now, do you, Gumball?” Her senses bring her a strange rush of nostalgia from her braggart, less-than-stellar “youth.”

Gumball huffs dryly, before being abruptly and violently pulled backwards back inside the hall. Darwin quickly slams the door, and starts to breathe heavily in frustration. Gumball sits up and swallows to moisten his throat. Darwin marches over him, and slaps him across the cheek.

“What. Was THAT?” He yells in a desperate and annoyed tone. “We agreed she was off-limits! You just wrecked it, dude! You wrecked it!!”

“Gaugh— Well I didn’t mean to look up!!” Gumball yells back. “I didn’t even know she was there! And it was so freaky!”

“You still wrecked it, dude! We had it! We almost got ‘em to do their stuff if we promised to leave them alone! Until you messed that one up!!”

“Well, FINE, I messed it up!! But it was still an accident, and it’s not my fault she’s so freaky!”

“You know what??! I have an idea!”

“What is it??”

“We stick with MY plan. We simply tell them what we want and stop messing with their freaky alien heads instead of trying to do reverse psychology!!”

“Yeah! We should probably stop taking advantage of their simple little spacey minds like that!”

“You think they can hear us from outside!? ‘Cause I don’t think they’ll appreciate us insulting them!”

“I—!” Gumball bends down to catch his breath, swallows, and shakes his head. “Alright, let’s do it. Okay.” Gumball walks over the door and opens it unsuspectingly.

Just waiting outside the door is Garnet, squinted down perched at the beam, unmoving at his eye level, inches within his face.

“Haaaauugh!” Gumball barely screams; a noise resembling a loud, mildly shocked exhale escapes from his mouth as he closes the door swiftly, turns around, and faces the ceiling. He facepalms to the point where he nearly sinks his his hands onto his face and groans loudly. Darwin gives Gumball a pat on his shoulder, wearing a  numb expression, but his lips twitch in an attempt not to smile. Gumball brings his hands to his mouth and frowns in defeat.

“…She look offended?” Gumball asks in muffles. Darwin shakes his head in pity and uncertainty. Gumball takes a deep exasperated breath. He walks over and opens the door once more with a scowl.

In a distance in front of him, Amethyst is snickering out of breath, appearing somewhat exhausted as if she had just finished a particularly intense laughing fit. Pearl has her back turned and her arms crossed, quickly peeking over her shoulder, suppressing a small chuckle. Gumball grimaces at them in annoyance, which only seems to amuse Amethyst more. He slowly looks to his right, his face twists into offended rage as he finds Garnet with her back leaning against the wall next to the door, expression stoic. “Sorry,” she says bluntly with a tiny snort. “I thought it would be funny.”

“Arghhhh!” Gumball groans and turns his back on the amused Gems, only to suddenly arch his back and rapidly turns back around. “Oh!— S-see? SEEE?!!! YOU just did it!!” he points to Garnet in a shout. “You just did as I did, alright??! You did that appearing thing like I did, BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY!! Ha, ha, FUNNY!!! Funny…!”

He lets out a loud, dramatic gasp that seems to flatten his organs. His furious tone and aggressive smile does not express the actual joy of his epiphany, and the Gems reel back in bafflement. Ignoring this, Gumball continues his seemingly rage-filled rant.

“Yeah, that’s what I did! That’s where we were going, you hear that, DARWIN?! Funny is weird, funny’s unusual! Funny bends the rules! Funny has NO rules! Got that? Defying gravity, messing with magic and physics and speed and stuff… you can do ALL that stuff, if YOU think it’ll be funny!! You can do anything, as long as it’s FUNNY!! C’mon, let’s walk on walls and build stuff fast and I’ll be laughing ‘cause it’s weird!! Get it?! ‘Cause it’s FUNNY!!! RIGHT??!!” he takes a long angry breath, and pauses dramatically. “HILAAARIOUS!!!!!”

Gumball starts to pant. Slowly, as the Gems stare blankly and silent, Gumball begins to recall what he had just said. He coughs. “But wait― that’s ridiculous, isn’t it…?” Gumball smacks his face as if it were a fly and groans, though more quietly. “Oh, where the HECK did I come up with THAT one??! Ridiculous! How could that EVER work with ANYONE, jeez! You’d have to be REALLY crazy, which is obviously not the case with me! Humph!”

After a few moments of sighing in dismissal, Gumball turns towards the Crystal Gems, still blank, but almost as if they are questioning his sanity. Stick to plan B, he can almost hear Darwin saying behind him. He clears his throat and decides to calm down.

“Alright… let’s get to the point here and stop messing around… Steven told me a few things about you. How quick and, uh, magical you guys are with your… superhero missions I think, how you built this giant temple with… the craziest layout you can imagine in your world —‘causemyhousemakesnosenseeither, but ANYWAY! Point is, funny or, serious, weird dramatic or whatever… I think you can go faster. And even WITH being precise or whatever you’re crazy fast and powerful… but you’re all just distracted aren’t you?”

At those words, Garnet takes a moment, and looks at the others. Pearl and Amethyst look at her wearily in response. With a subtle mouth curl on Garnet’s behalf, she had already stated nothing more and nothing less than one thing: he’s right. Since the start, the Gems found themselves in something they had never seen before in the countless millennia of their existence. Such a thing they thought had only existed in human literature and arts, and they can’t help but simply drop their tools, and gaze at the strange sky, moon, and sun through the skylight, and let the ‘time’ pass by. But if this speculation had only stalled them from the task at hand, then the cat is right. Curiosity and awe allowed them to stop and stare. They’d stopped for too long now.

As the Gems silently think to themselves, Gumball starts to frown, almost defeated, gaining no response from the Gems. He snorts dismissively and somewhat bitterly, not feeling like acting patient any longer, nor having the energy. “Well,” he sighs, almost passive-aggressively, “when you feel like getting those sticks out of your butts anytime soon, we’d really appreciate it. NOW GOOD DAY, MA’AMS!”

Not even Pearl feels like scolding him for his rage as he closes the door one final time, leaving them to think in silence. They could hear his feet dragging across the floor as he and Darwin walk down the hall with nothing else to do except wait more. Frustrated grunts can be heard as Pearl’s eyebrows curl upwards into a look of pity.

Amethyst sighs loudly, smacks her lips and rolls her eyes, “So…” she says, looking disappointed. “…now what?”

Pearl shrugs her shoulders almost exaggeratingly, still with her expression of pity. “Well— we…” Pearl looks around in uncertainty, and turns towards Garnet. “Um, Garnet? What do you propose we do?”

Garnet hums and adjusts her shades. She once again looks up towards the skylight, before deciding on what to say. “…With the way this ‘planet’ works, we should probably keep going without thinking too much. We can’t afford any more distractions. It’ll be over quicker, and there aren’t gonna be any bad consequences doing that.”

Pearl puts her finger to her chin. “But how would that work? How do we… progress ‘subconsciously,’ to say the least?” She asks in sincerity, with no doubt in her tone.

Garnet stops for a moment, and thinks. She shrugs her shoulders and hums ‘I dunno.’

“Maybe we should go with what feels right for us, you know?” Amethyst suggests, reaching her finger at one of the beams to tap on it. “And, what the Gummy cat said, we’re super fast and powerful, like how we go on missions and built the temple? Yeah, some good stuff in there that WE built with our powers and stuff ‘cause we wanted to whatever we wanted with it, and it felt right for us. And, yeah, combined with the weird stuff we see here, who knows what we can do?”

“Hm.” Garnet ponders “We do have our unlimited Gem powers on our side…” Garnet turns her head to the dust particles reflecting the sunshine. “… And then some.”

“So…” Pearl brings her hands together, index fingers pointed at her lips pensively. “You’re both suggesting that the, um, logic, of this world and all its physical ‘liberties’ from our own, combined with our own Gem powers, we could end up making the work not only faster, but more… interesting? And… feeling ‘right’?”

Pearl’s index fingers point towards Garnet as she finishes her statement. Ever so subtly, Garnet cracks a little smirk. Garnet turns towards Amethyst to do the same, and she produces a wider smirk in return. Pearl finds herself smiling cautiously, balling her fists close to her chest. She slowly, gently reaches out to her tool belt, holding a drill as if she were holding a fine instrument. Garnet then swiftly reaches into a nearby toolbox and holds it under her arm, jumping in the beams and climbing some stories up.

“Alright, Gems. It’s time to put more backbone into this! No more breaks! We won’t stop until we complete it this time.”

“Yes, Garnet!” Pearl chirps. “No prob!” Amethyst makes a casual thumbs up.

“Pearl, get up here,” Garnet orders. “We’ll need more materials.”

Pearl quickly jumps up in maneuvers at Garnet’s direction, jumping up stories in the beams without breaking a sweat. She reaches in the box and fetches more tools and pieces from it. The box seems larger on the inside; she begins to pull out cables, bags of concrete mix, and hundreds of nuts and bolts, as well as several more heavy duty tools to patch them together. Most of the harder materials are handed over to Garnet as she also holds the remaining beams over her other shoulder. Garnet tosses a pair of wrenches and a few nuts down to Amethyst several stories up, and Amethyst catches them all without trouble.

She twirls the wrenches in her hands like drumsticks with the nuts tucked between her head and her shoulders. “Ha, ha! This is gonna be cool! Can’t wait to see what we’re gonna do! I bet it’ll look awesome!”

Pearl laughs a bit mirthlessly while prepping her drill. “Well, let’s just hope this will all make sense!”

[The Gems’ work starts back up.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXO2Vs9Tbxg) The metal is scratching across the beams as the Gems resume work further on the structure of the Rooms. Amethyst screws in and drums the hard metal pieces in with her hands, in drumstick maneuvers. There are varying strengths in the beat, as she makes a steady, consistent rhythm. Right. Left. Right, left, right. Left. Right, left, right. Left.

Some industrial buzzing and echoes are heard as more pieces of the Rooms are put together with their tools. Some almost sound like vocals. Garnet is organizing the cables in heavy corner of the soon-to-be walls to provide electric current to the Rooms.

The rhythm. Is changing. The tempo. Is the same. Their feet are tapping beams, Their hands are tapping beams. The metal is sounding, the metal is scratching. The rhythm. Is faster. Their work. Is faster.

Beats and percussion overtake the enviroment around them. The chasm is filled with noises, and soon the area becomes difficult to process visually to an outsider. Garnet gives electric currents to the cables, and the noises start to fade. Amethyst keeps “drumming,” even as the buzzing fades.

The rhythm stops to calibrate the electricity. The garbled electronic vocals traverse through the chasm as the beams are completed.

The rhythm grows stronger as the Gems place concrete. The walls, and the ceilings, and floors of each of the Rooms are being created, and the doors are being set up. More electronic sounds emerge, beeps and buzzes in the still-consistent rhythm. The Gems continue, and continue putting details in the quickly rising structure. The droning rhythm continues on, and more buzzing and scratching is heard along the chasm.

A loud buzz rings out, as their machinery runs the inner structure of the Rooms.

More buzzes and more intensity resonate as the structure of the Rooms is being finished. Rapid electronic taps change the rhythm for seconds and loud hammering runs through the quickly hardened concrete, getting louder and louder. The electronic tapping speeds to three to five taps per second, in the two and a half seconds left to complete the base.

Static. More wiring. The Gems press on as they finish the Rooms.

The rhythm returns louder. The industrial buzzes grow more intense. Miscellaneous bangs and several sounds spread through the chasm. The Gems are adding the crucial details of the rooms in rapid, near impossible speed. This part there, this part here. Lights. Furnitures. Straight from the storage room retrieved at lighting speed. Metallic screams ring out across the closing spaces of the chasm as the hard equipment is brought to the rooms. The sounds grow more and more intense. Rapid blinking. The Gems begin to lose track of what is happening as a final metallic screech is heard—

The Gems stand on one completed Room in floor 36. Static still rings out, yet slowly fades. Dumbfounded, silent, and somewhat nauseous, the Gems look up and notice something else beyond the bounds. The 36th floor doesn’t end at the skylight. The ceiling is much higher than they thought, and the tower is still much taller. Something else, a different part of the tower, can be glimpsed.

But it doesn’t matter right now. As they stare at their own feet at a Room’s completed ceiling, they know there is a far more important announcement to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have any questions or want background info, you can go over at toon-tower.tumblr.com, and my personal, elceetheporcupine.tumblr.com


	9. 9 Minutes Off

[“It is done.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyKeE3fBEsM)

The words from Garnet’s mouth echo through the others’ conscience. A familiar sense of barely contained joy runs course through their little carbon bodies. They can smell fresh balloons, and they can feel a playful percussion that signals the start of something new and exciting. Curiosity reaches its peak. They can feel the percussion playing in their ears. Steven, Gumball, and Anais’s fingers start to move. The park crew exchanges looks as they begin to move, and even Lion starts to stare wide-eyed with his ears twitching.

Small feet rush towards the as more of Garnet’s words speak, but are too distracted by the boundless possibilities in their minds to listen. Her voices only echo through their ears and they only hear word salad. They continue to run forward, and the park crew joins them. The strange percussion rings on, and excitement rings in the air. Eventually, the Gems themselves make their way to the Rooms.

The kids plainly understand one fundamental thing: it’s time to play. Time for fun.

New doors swing and slam when they begin to travel to each Room in each floor. A brief crash course is soon learned when they notice the doors in the floors and ceiling are far apart, as its structure was built to accommodate the big scale of their contents. They jump high with ease to reach each door on the ceilings, travelling quickly from each Room to Room. Darwin winds up learning the crash course in a literal sense when he fails to open the ceiling door in time. This does not stop him, even with a black eye and some teeth missing. Soon, disorganized, colored blurs zoom out through the tower, each finding their own place.

In the Electronic Room, Anais toys around with some synthesizers. Speakers that ring out throughout every corner of the tower, filling it with the increasing energetic melody. Her fingers travel to produce a starry theme, increasing in volume each time. Doors keep slamming and happiness is expressed fiercely. The sound intensifies and Anais begins to feel a certain threshold, introducing a second, sillier sounding theme that begins to overtake the original. Anais starts to smile, feeling energized by the music. In the Dance Room in the same floor, Pearl notices an unusual talent coming nearby as she start to practice her rapid ballet to the increasing rhythm and melody. She figures she will take care of that later on.

Rigby admittedly had only wanted to find the Video Game Room, instead finding himself in the LED Room. The pattern on all walls ceiling and doors are the same moving mesmerizing colors, unclear as to where up, down, left, and right is. Rigby, standing in what he assumes is the ‘ground’ turns in all directions with eyes as big as baseballs, staring at the hypnotizing patterns on the walls. He quickly loses his sense of direction, making light yelps of both bewilderment and awe on being unable to tell which way is up. He feels as if light is being brought in. Suddenly, a door next to him opens. Rigby watches Darwin zooms by, greeting him happily in near-zero Gravity before “floating” towards the door on the other side and exiting through it. Curiously, Rigby “walks” over to the door Darwin came from and opens it. He immediately feels himself falling straight into the Cosmic Golf Room in low gravity, instinctively grabbing a nearby orange club and hitting a bright green ball underneath the black light and green stars, standing on top of a round, blue ‘planet-like’ surface.

The little ball travels to the Room next to it, the Metal Room. The ball bounces off the aluminum walls, before hitting the ceiling and dropping onto the Statue Room. The ball quickly rolls around the inside of the spiral structures, before dropping onto the Jungle Room.

Amethyst, swinging on a vine, swiftly kicks the little ball, sending it up from the Statue Room back into the Metal Room. She swings across the Room while guffawing, with Lion playing and rolls around. Amethyst swings towards the Castle Room and kicks open the door, where Pops tries on a king’s crown and shoots him a quick ‘YO!’. With a grin, she swings into the Rock n’ Roll room, shouting towards Skips whom has a saxophone in his hands. She swings again with force, releases the vine, and slides onto the icy rink of the Ice Room next to the Room. In a swift motion, she opens the door in a large, ice-less circle in the middle of the rink and drops onto the Rave Room, where she begins to dance along with Mordecai and Penny. The ball, now bouncing faster in the Metal Room without losing momentum, assists the percussion bouncing along the chrome-sprayed pots, pans, and cowbells.

Mordecai then exits the Rave Room for a moment and opens a door to the Balloon Room. He is greeted with the sight of dozens of colorful floating balloons and some grey ones; silver clouds floating gently in the air. Mordecai holds an overinflated, mirror-like balloon in the tips of his feather fingers, just as the smaller grey balloons float in front of it, arranging themselves to produce a pareidolic image, sporting an expression of surprise.

In the Spotlight Room, Garnet stands perched in a catwalk, with colorful spotlights and projectors with patterns shining on the walls. Steven, Gumball, and a newly-arrived Darwin are in a state of euphoria, dancing along with the melody and bouncing until their throats are dry. High Fives are exchanged between them, while Garnet begins to move the spotlights. The rhythm starts to change and makes loud periodic bangs. Darwin shuffles, Gumball taps both feet and claps his hands to the beat, and Steven begins to run.

Steven slams into a wall where the wall door normally should have been. This brings him back to reality, trying to register what happened. The percussion stops and the starry theme returns. Garnet turns to Steven, and hops of the catwalk to attend him. She begins to explain.

“There are two Rooms on this floor that don’t have doors, and they’re inaccessible.” There is a small pause as the melody is altered. “We don’t know what they are, and we don’t remember building them… our work was very, very fast, and it was almost all a blur. But I know it’s nothing you should worry about. We either don’t ever visit them, or you might let yourself _get drawn in_.”

Garnet taps Steven’s shoulder and he scratches his chin pensively. The silly theme returns, and Anais is completely into it as her fingers press into the keys rapidly. It then takes Steven a moment to realize he is indeed in the 36th floor. Traveling around the Rooms, climbing through the doors in the floors and ceilings is quicker than he thought. As he wonders what could be the mystery behind the doorless Rooms, he turns around to find Gumball with his face scrunched up in absent-minded confusion and squinting VERY closely. Steven almost reels back.

“Dude…” he almost whispers, while puckering his lips upward. He lifts a hand to point at Steven, starting to smirk. “Did you know your hair’s shaped like a rose…?”

Steven is startled; he reaches up to touch the back of his hair to feel a familiar flowery texture under his curls. As he does, Gumball grins and bobs his head to the rhythm. Steven then starts to laugh, and Gumball starts to laugh right back. They both start to laugh harder, and their feet tap as they regain their energy, preparing to dance again once the rhythm drops. Gumball jumps up, and starts bouncing along with Darwin. Steven soon begins to move his arms and his legs. Suddenly, he’s completely forgotten as to what he was curious about. He joins Gumball and Darwin in their free dances, having the best time. Garnet looks down at them and cracks a small smile.

Rigby manages to stumble into the Rave Room after traveling a maze. Amethyst sees him, chuckles, and pulls him towards her and Mordecai. She takes both their hands and “waltzes” with them at the same time, mixing her partnership moves with club dancing with controlled proficiency and wildness in her style. Mordecai and Rigby are almost in a daze, overtaken by her skill. Penny floats, and runs along the walls in glee, the strobe lights shining all around them in the beat of the rhythm, reaching down to give the three of them a high-five. Pops pulls a string and blows the small cannons which explode into confetti, and he laughs and claps joyfully. Skips decides to play his saxophone some other time, so he sits in the chair, and simply bobs along to the beat. The Metal Room starts sounding, and Pearl resumes her improvised dance to the unconventional melody. Lion starts to sprint and leap across the Rooms. Steven, Gumball, and Darwin continue to jam wildly among each other and bouncing, as the music starts to reach its threshold once more.

The rhythm’s periodic bangs return for the finale. Gumball, Steven, Darwin stomp their feet and headbang to the beats. Penny, Amethyst, Mordecai, and Rigby do the same. Then Anais, as she brings the melody to an end and Pearl prepares to strike a pose.

The melody stops.

The pots and cowbells start clanking wildly immediately after. The repetitive rhythm continues with its energy and the sounds still run through the tower. Tired and happy, the residents continue to dance, not bothering to know what’s making that beat. Lion stops running, stopping in the Paint Room. He sniffs the air and his ears perk up suspiciously. His eyes glow as he tries to pinpoint the source while making paw prints on the floor with red paint. But before he can go out to search, the rhythm slowly starts to fade. The little ball lies on the ground of the Statue Room the whole time, its surface blank, but still somehow in **surprise**.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... teehee.
> 
> toon-tower.tumblr.com


	10. Strings and Theory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is. Sorry for the long wait, hope you like this one. It's somewhat Pearl-centric, after all.
> 
> EDIT: Added a link to the song featured.

One thing for sure, Pearl absolutely must not let herself get attached to them.

It’s certainly no secret that she loves Steven dearly. She shouldn’t even have to describe it. But as much as she loves and adores him, she admits to herself that he is… quite a handful on his own. How is she supposed to handle more of these children, let alone extra-universal children with animal-like anatomy and fur colored in an unnatural pigment for mammals? She’s also puzzled by their… versatility, especially on Gumball’s case, what with his teleportation and brashness and all of that stuff. But she doesn’t hate them. Not in the least. She just simply cannot provide for all of them.

Nevertheless, Pearl sees incredible talent on their hands. She believes it is important for that talent to be developed and trained properly. In a strictly educational point of view, of course, not to form any unnecessary attachments. Where are their parents, by the way…?

Pearl exits the Dance Room and walks into the empty, now brightly lit Spotlight Room —without anyone to handle the music and the spotlights, the Room is fairly nondescript with fluorescent lights and grey walls. Most of the guests had run off to explore the rest of the Rooms, hopefully more calmly and slowly, now that the music has been turned off. The experience had felt like a blur, only about ¼ of the usual time it took to organize everyone’s thoughts and actions. She had finished her improvised dance hours ago, and now several other things lingered on her mind. She has much to think about this place.

Admittedly, she had fun, dancing to the repetitive, melodically chaotic abstraction known as electronic music she believed only humans enjoyed for their parties. Was that the same music the humans played in their “wild parties”? She couldn’t tell; it all sounds the same to her. She silently giggles to herself at her own joke. But in all seriousness, she was not “into it,” to say the least. The whole experience reminded her of Amethyst’s antics…

Oh. Right. Pearl had decided for a while that she needs to settle something with her. Something that has been worrying her a bit. Namely, her relationship with that bird and that racoon. Mordecai and Rigby? Those individuals. As much as Pearl would like to, she… does not like them. Her nose and lips instinctively curl in disgust if she so much as hears their laughter. They are loud, they are rambunctious, they are lazy, and they are irresponsible at worst. Somehow, she feels as if they’re even worse than Amethyst in that regard, animals or not. Gumball, she could almost excuse, as he IS only a kid (kitten?), but the others’ behavior is frankly unjustifiable. She just knew they were not a good influence on Amethyst, yet, she seems to really enjoy their company. Quite a lot.

That is what worries her. She needs to do something.

An opening door briefly brought Pearl out of her thoughts. She sees the bunny enter the Room from the Electronic Room. Pearl sees that Anais looks a bit… bored, staring at the ground disinterestedly. New thoughts immediately begin to flood Pearl’s mind. Anais could very much play. She had quite the grasp in theory and melodical competence, even when it’s something as strange as electronic music. Pearl clears her throat.

“Hello there, Anais.” Pearl tries to greet in a friendly manner, and Anais looks up at her in slight confusion. Pearl then tries to lean down at eye level to the remarkably short little rabbit kit. “That was a very good melody that you played a while ago. You seem to be very skilled.”

Anais shrugs her shoulders and smirks. “Yeah, I _guess_ I’m pretty skilled.”

Pearl smiles at her. “In fact, I would say that those kinds of skills deserve more training for someone with as much potential as you. Do you agree?”

Anais rolled her eyes at Pearl. “Mmmmmmayyybe?”

Pearl slowly starts to get more excited. “Well, then. I was wondering if you would be interested in receiving… proper piano lessons. Someone like you deserves some formal education, correct? Not that there’s anything wrong with the music you’re making now, but I believe you can hone your own skills better with more grace, the _classical_ way. How does that sound?”

Anais takes several moments to respond, turning her head in a few directions and occasionally looking at Pearl’s eager, expectant face. She shrugs her shoulders again and responds in sincerity, almost beaming up at Pearl. “Sure, why not. Think I could go for some more classical musical discipline to develop myself.”

Pearl lets out a light gasp and clasps her hands happily, almost in awe at Anais’s way of thinking (is she about 4 years old?), her manners, and willingness. If there is at least one person that she could actually find a semblance of common ground on, it would have to be Anais. “Well, then, I believe we should start on your lessons right away! Let’s move ahead and find the Instrument Room.”

Pearl leans down and gently takes Anais’s hand cautiously― she is only leading her to the Instrument Room, the gesture doesn’t mean anything.

Pearl and Anais look down to find the door in the ground that would lead them to the floor where the Instrument Room is. Anais immediately opens it and looks down to the Ball Room. No, not the ballroom, the Ball Room. Pearl looks at the rolling basketballs, baseballs, footballs… she’s not terribly impressed with the unsafe path, but Anais looks at her with some determination in her face. Pearl watches her cautiously jump straight down into the Room’s ground door and opening it to drop down on the Video Game Room, which resembles something of an arcade. Pearl jumps down herself, having to dodge some of the flying projectiles with twirls and some pirouettes before opening the door in a calculated spin, and leaping down.

Past the Video Game Room, Pearl and Anais continue to travel through the maze of doors, before finally ending up in the Instrument Room without seeming to have any idea of how they got there. The Instrument Room resembles a standard practice room, with wooden floors and soundproof walls, and instruments neatly stored in one corner to take, save for the grand piano, placed just near the center of the Room but far away enough from the door. Pearl makes a mental note to remind herself of the floor the Instrument Room is located in, and finds it to be next to the Statue Room, and on the same floor as the Gym Room… even with her knowledge of building it, the layout of the Tower is still confusing to her, and… that’s saying something.

But that doesn’t really matter at the moment. Pearl makes no haste in finding the right instrument for Anais. Right away, Anais walks forward the grand piano, and looks onto Pearl with expectant, yet pensive eyes. Pearl makes a calm gesture to encourage her, and Anais sits on the chair. She’s much too short to reach the keys, so Pearl generously adjusts the seat to a preferable height. Anais eyes the piano in a blank expression, seemingly attempting to recognize the keys all over again.

“Very well, then, Anais,” Pearl begins. “We’ll start with finding Middle C. I’m sure this won’t be much of a problem for you, since you’ve proven to positively dominate the electronic equivalent.”

Anais does indeed find Middle C with ease. She gently presses the key, and stares in confusion when the note produced sounds light and barely audible. It feels clear that she expected something slightly more impressive than that.

“Now, Anais,” Pearl begins to clarify while standing close, only for Anais to perk up at her with confidence.

“Yeah, it’s okay, I know now,” Anais said. “… I need to press a little harder if I want the notes to be louder, seeing as how this is a traditional piano that operates with strings… Like this?” Anais presses the key with some more force, producing a louder sound. “What’s interesting is that several electronic organs DO try to replicate that effect…”

Pearl practically jumps up with joy. “Oh, wow, I’m very impressed!” Pearl exclaims. “Why, I shouldn’t even have to teach you!”

Anais tips her head back in pride, and flattery. Just then, the door from the Statue Room begins to open. Anais and Pearl turn their heads to see Pops entering the Instrument Room halfway in. He sheepishly peeks through the door.

“Oh, pardon me!” he calls out politely. “I apologize for the interruption! I was merely wondering if we could borrow this room for a bit? The Gym Room seems a tad crowded…”

“Oh! Well…” Pearl places a finger on her mouth, and looks down at an expectant Anais. “… I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have you here for our lessons! You…” Pearl looks around the room to find some of the instruments and glances towards the strings. “… wouldn’t happen to know how to play some, would you?”

“Oh, yes,” Pops answered. “I know how to play quite a few instruments, though I would like to play the cello.”

Pearl hums for a moment. “Well, then. I guess you can be part of our little band here,” she says to him kindly, and held out her arm in a becoming gesture. “You may come inside.”

“Oh, yes,” Pops cheers in a higher tone, opening the door fully, and turns to something behind him. “Come, Darwin Watterson, let us tune!”

“Wha-” before Pearl could finish, an orange blur zooms by, whooping excitedly until he reaches the percussion instruments. Pearl looks and sees… it’s the little fish boy. Pearl gasps.

As soon as he arrives in front of the percussion instruments Darwin promptly gets his little fins on a small hand drum, and begins to tap on it randomly. “Hey, this isn’t anywhere near as boring as I thought it would be!” he remarked loudly as he begins to tap louder. “This is pretty easy!”

Pearl puffs up and holds a finger up, absolutely needing to remind the little… boy, that it’s MUCH more complex that simply just tapping around. But… she digresses. She then prepares to say something else, until she finds the door to the Statue Room and the Gym Room are left open. She turns her head when she hears some loud voices coming out of the Gym Room. She stares at the door, through another door, from Room, to Room, to Room. In the third Room, from a door small in perspective, she hears some very familiar sounds of laughter, and magic. Those are sounds she can recognize from anybody, a teammate of hers, a fellow, long-living Crystal Gem… that was busy ‘entertaining’ someone else.

Pearl tilts her head and blinks. If she would have to be honest with herself, she will admit that, maybe… she would need to work some things out when they return home. If Amethyst ever decides to return home. They all seem very happy here, really.

But she feels something. Telling her there was no feasible way they could stay in this place permanently… Pearl gulps. Thousands of thoughts begin to fill her head, recalling the familiar feeling of… lacking in free will that her own kind propagated for so many millions of years.

This feels different somehow. Indescribably, inconceivably different.

Pearl feels a tiny little rabbit finger on her thigh, pulling her back into reality (well… _this_ reality). Pearl immediately perks up for her sake, and hears her speak.

“Can we get back to the lesson, now?” Anais asks. “I’d like to teach Darwin a thing or two about rhythm…” She finishes almost through gritted teeth, glancing back at her adoptive brother banging the drum randomly.

Pearl lets out a tiny chuckle. “Well, Anais.” Pearl clears her throat. “I’m sorry, but it seems that our lesson has to be interrupted for now. I have to take care of a few things, and then we’ll properly continue. In the meantime, try to familiarize yourself with the keyboard, and try to teach these nice gentlemen like you want,” Pearl advises to Anais, the reaches down to pat her head. “I’ll be right back.”

Pearl turns to the door of the Statue Room as Anais walks back to the piano. Pearl gently closes the door behind her after entering the Statue Room, and proceeds to walk to the other side of the door. From the door to the Gym Room, the laughter and magical sounds seem to be getting louder. The circular, abstract sculptures somehow seem to be getting through to her in a mysterious way. Pearl feels a bit entranced looking through their curved, crescent edges in various colors, a far cry from what she would normally see at home; circles didn’t end in edges most of the time. As she brings her thoughts away from the peculiar “aesthetic” she was used to, he looks back at the door to the Gym Room. Pearl finally steps into the doorframe.

The first thing she sees on her left corner inside the Room is a very tired-looking Steven running on a treadmill, panting, and trying to sing some incomprehensible tune from all that dryness in his throat. Does he need some water? Steven? She then notices a water bottle on his hand, and he reaches it towards his face to squeeze the water spray into his mouth. Good. Pearl nods at him, though he doesn’t see it, and turns to the center of the Room, where… the bird, the racoon, Penny, and Amethyst are sitting, in comfy benches around the ground door, simply laughing out loud as Amethyst appears to be using shapeshifting magic with them.

“No wait, wait, wait, I think I got it,” Amethyst says in between deep giggles. She takes a breath, and begins to shift herself again. Pearl almost steps back in disgust when she sees she’d turned into something grotesque, a… gumball machine (is that what they call it?) with an exaggeratingly grumpy face.

The bird and the racoon laugh uncontrollably, the latter screeching his laughter. “Yeah, we’re going with that!” Mordecai shouts in between laughters. Rigby falls onto the floor laughing his heart out, and Penny giggles lightly.

Pearl simply frowns in confusion.

“Ha, ha, ha!!” Amethyst guffaws, then puts on a deep, almost nasal voice. “Quit messin’ around or you’re fired!!” She then proceeds to roar small fire spouts out of her mouth, while sporting an even more exaggerated rage expression.

Rigby continues to laugh uncontrollably, then sits on his bottom. “Yeah, ‘cause, ‘cause he’s breathing fire and stuff, his rage kinda like matches that!!” he shrieks.

“Aw, dude!” Modrecai said in an annoyed tone and threw his arm (wing) up. “You jinxed it!”

“Ha! You call _that_ a pun??!” a small voice mocks from above. They all look up to see Gumball holding up the ceiling door with only his head, black light shining behind him, and smiling confidently. “I’ll show you guys a REAL pun!!” he shouts with bragging confidence. “What kind of musical genre do the, Crystal Gems like?”

Amethyst scoffs. But oh, Pearl could answer that easily, but before she could open her mouth, the bird interfered.

“Hm, What DO they like?” Mordecai asks with his arms crossed and one of his eyebrows lowers, seemingly challenging the young cat.

“Yeah, what do we like?” Amethyst plays along in a smug tone, looking up at the cat.

Gumball snorts. “Rock.”

The group below seem to go silent, with their smiles instantly faded. Gumball looks down at them with an expectant grin. Moments later, a sputter comes out of Penny’s mouth and she giggles even louder than ever before. Soon enough, Amethyst, Mordecai and Rigby start laughing along, getting painfully louder each small moment, and Rigby falls down yet again. Amethyst, in particular, is cackling.

“It’s true!” Amethyst shouts and laughs with a happy crack in her voice and a wide grin. Amethyst continues to laugh, though clearly out of “breath” by that point. She is definitely enjoying herself, and she is _very_ happy. She is positively full of joy, almost as Steven himself. And she seems to be having the time of her life with these different “people.”

Hm.

Pearl hears a thud above, followed by a painful yelp. She doesn’t look up in time to see Gumball’s squashed face in between the door and the floor of the Room above with his tongue and eyeballs bulging out for a split second. He recoils back in pain, leaving the door wide open to see Lion’s tail sticking out into the Gym Room.

“He― _HEY!!_ ” Gumball yells in rage and the tail moves back inside the Cosmic Golf Room. “Garnet, tell that lion stop jumping on things and PLAY like everyone else!”

“Well, next time, try not to stick your head down there,” Garnet tells him, as Pearl could hear; she seems busy. “By the way, add another hole-in-one to my score.”

“WHAT?? Aw, come on, you’re advantaged and you know it! I WANNA REMATCH!!” Gumball begins to walk away into the Cosmic Golf Room.

“Relax, Gumball, we’re not even halfway done,” Skips says as he passes by to close the ceiling door. “Yeah, you got about 58 bogeys, but I bet you’ll get your chance…” he looks down on Mordecai and Rigby with a shrug. “… or not.” The door closes.

“Good luck, Gumball!” Penny shouts to the door, while the other three slump back in satisfaction. Pearl blinks and looks back to Amethyst, who continues to grin playfully at the others.

Pearl looks up and shakes her head, then puffs up and finally clears her throat to address Amethyst. Pearl watches the group continue to lounge around without noticing her. Pearl proceeds to clear her throat even louder, probably even genuinely coughing in between. At this point, the others finally turn their heads to her. Pearl immediately straightens up her posture more and smiles politely as they begin to stare.

“Hello! Well, I see you’re all having fun, huh!” Pearl says a little awkwardly, and puts her finger and thumb on her lips again. “Um, well, I was simply wondering if, Amethyst,” Pearl gestures to a bored-looking Amethyst in the process of rolling her eyes.  “… would like to take a few minutes of her time to… have a conversation.” Pearl doesn’t take her eyes off of Amethyst during this time.

Amethyst hums sarcastically without saying another word and looking away in apparent disinterest. Pearl suddenly starts feeling more uncomfortable with the presence of the others in the group, and starts to stroke her hands. None of them say anything. Mordecai and Rigby get distracted by something in the Room, but Pearl notices Penny looking back and forth between both her and Amethyst, shifting a bit in her seat and ready to get up.

Soon, Pearl hears rapid footsteps right next to her, a split second to realize what the other two animals were distracted by.

“Alright c’mon, everybody!” Pearl is startled to hear Steven’s voice bellowing through a megaphone. “Break time’s over for you guys! Let’s go to cycling! Keep up with aerobic training! C’mon, let’s GO!”

The groans from the mouths of Mordecai and Rigby seemed to sound like an old, rusted human cruise ship, while Penny very quickly reaches for her… fuzzy things for her hands and stepping away. While she routinely begins to jump in the air for her aerobics, Mordecai and Rigby slug away to the cycles, continuing to groan all the way. Pearl watches them all leave for their exercises, leaving only her and Amethyst at the center of the Room.

“There!” Steven says triumphantly. “Now you guys can talk in peace!” The bundle of joy gives them an encouraging thumbs up, and Pearl places her hand on the chest where her ‘heart’ would be. He runs off to the cycles and shouts again into the megaphone to keep the animals busy. What a great strategist.

 

Pearl then clasps her hands together and turns to Amethyst, impressed herself. “Alright, now we… must look for a place to talk where we’ll truly be in peace, free of any inconvenient noises or distractions. If that’s not much of a problem for you.”

Amethyst blinks, and takes a few seconds to consider it, turning her head to the various other doors of the Room and scratching her hip, looking for somewhere to go. She looks down and raises her brow, humming loudly. “How ‘bout down here?” Amethyst reaches to the ground door and pulls it open. Pearl looks to the hole and finds an illumination of peaceful blue lighting from below. One of the most tranquil environments in an ‘architectural’ building. Leaning further into the hole, Pearl feels a small, satisfied smile rising.

“Yes,” Pearl responds. “This would be perfect.”

Amethyst shrugs. “Well, alright,” she remarked almost disinterestedly, earning a split-second look of disbelief from Pearl.

But Pearl doesn’t press on. She wastes no time in descending down into the Saltwater Room, making sure to stick the landing in a controlled, elegant maneuver. Pearl took the time to stare at the scenery she carefully picked to decorate the Room. Dark to navy blue painted walls to match the brighter scenery of the water-filled glass tanks lit up with a lighter but tranquil shade. No fish are present in these saltwater tanks, as they are deemed too much of a hassle to maintain. Pearl prefers it that way. If she had her way, she would’ve modified the overall layout to make it seem a bit more like her own room (but that would’ve been TOO vain, wouldn’t it have?). Cushioned seats adorn the corners of the ground door, and Pearl sat down with her legs crossed.

Soon enough, Amethyst drops down in a cannonball pose, almost crashing through the ground door. She then bounces to the cushioned seats in a wrestling tackle, where she lies curved to her side. Her head rests on one hand and seeming to show off some hip, staring at Pearl with a relaxed, but smug smile. Pearl forces herself not to get too uncomfortable by it.

“So, Pearl, whaddup?” Amethyst asked in a low voice, still smiling.

Pearl makes sure to sit straight with her back arched. “Well, I just wanted to ask you a few things.” Pearl’s voice seems quieter, spoken with a small layer of worry. Amethyst blinks and her smile falters to a degree, in response to Pearl’s tone. Pearl looks back to stare at the tanks for a full minute. “Do you like this place, Amethyst?”

Amethyst blinks again, and rights herself from her spot. She looks at her with an expression of discomfort herself, almost seeming to possess an idea on the point Pearl wants to get across to her right away. Pearl finds her in place emitting a quiet hum. For a moment, she thinks Amethyst will deliberately choose not to answer, out of spite, simply because it’s something she would do. However, Amethyst did indeed chooses to respond.

“Yeah, I really like it.” she answers calmly and sincerely, though Amethyst seems to still show some uncertainty in the her tone. “Pretty, cool, I guess. Pretty _weird_ , that’s for sure. Think I’d wanna see more.”

Pearl breathes. “And the… ‘people’ here?” she asks. “Do you enjoy their company?”

Amethyst brightens up almost immediately. “ _Yeah!_ Huh, huh! They’s so fun!” She starts gesturing with her hands. “Mordecai, Rigby… They're really cool dudes! And the other kids, um, Gumball, _Penny_! She’s really cool.” Amethyst happily nods her head. “They’re all so fun, I love it!”

Pearl watches Amethyst close her eyes and lounge back in her seat in satisfaction. Pearl twiddled her thumb as she begins to twiddle her fingers. “You seem very happy here.” Pearl pressed on slowly. “The happiest I’ve… seen you yet.”

Amethyst hums but doesn’t respond. Pearl can swear she can hear her gulping nervously and uncomfortably if she doesn’t hide it. Pearl takes a deep breath, trying to mask the worrying dryness of her own throat and tightening chest. She needs to ask at least one more question a more serious one.

“Would you stay permanently?”

Silence. Naturally, Pearl doesn’t get an answer right away. Amethyst’s satisfaction and pretenses of calmness fade right away, and she opens her eyes. She doesn’t look at Pearl. Slowly, she lifts herself to sit up straight. The only sounds coming from her mouth being the grunts as she pushes her body up and some medium breaths. She sits, and leans forward with her elbow resting her thigh and her head against her palm, looking away from Pearl. She gently drums her own face with her fingers, staring upward in thought. Hesitance? … Why does she need to think so hard on it…?

“… Yeah, it WOULD be pretty ideal,” Amethyst answers quietly, and Pearl feels a small, tiny shock. “But,” Amethyst continues, “the thing is… I can’t just leave Earth —well, OUR Earth— behind like that. I’m still a Crystal Gem, and I still have my duties and my places there, even if I’m not too ‘happy’ with ‘em. C’mon, Pearl, even I know the fun’s gotta stop at one point and get back to work at home or something,” Amethyst smiled. “Even Mordecai and Rigby told me.”

Amethyst turns her head, and wears a small forlorn expression. “I don’t think I’d leave. It’s not gonna replace our Earth. These guys are cool and this place might be pretty good to stay, and yeah, it’s the best fun I’ve had in years, but I still know you guys a LOT more. Lots of stuff still need to be fixed, but I don’t think I’d wanna trade that for anything else anytime soon. I know you’re worried that our home is gonna feel like a letdown after this, but… what I’m doing is that I’m living it to the fullest in a world you don’t even know about every century or so. Don’t worry about it. I’ll still go home.”

Pearl patiently listens to Amethyst’s whole explanation, and releases a silent breath. She smiles slightly in relief. Most of her concerns regarding her close teammate diminish, and now she is certain that she will still show priority to her love and loyalty for the Crystal Gems, even when it isn’t perfect, and they still need to mend things at times. Pearl needs to remind herself of that, she figures. Whatever happens next… “Well, then,” Pearl allows herself to lean back against the seat in relaxation. “I think we should deal with some of these pressing manners when we get back home. This doesn’t seem like the right kind of time and place for that.”

“Yeah,” Amethyst agrees. “Home problems can be dealt at home. But for now, we should take every chance to have fun while we’re here.” Amethyst yawns and leans back herself and looks at the tanks. “Seriously, we don’t see this kind of thing in a lifetime.”

Pearl hums in agreement, even though they very much have different definitions of fun. Many of Pearl’s concerns begin to drift away, alongside the pleasant waters in the tanks that bask in the blue glow. She’s so much glad and almost amazed that turned out near perfectly fine; she was not looking forward to a long argument. Pearl blinks softly, and she’s about ready to fully relax, when Amethyst begins to say something else.

“Besides… I wouldn’t really have a choice in the matter.”

This makes Pearl jump in confusion and worry, and stands up in her seat. “Wha—” she asks in a subtly alarmed tone. “What do you mean by that?” Her concerns rise up in triples.

Amethyst shrugs, and sits up. “I dunno…” She gestures to her head. “I just… FEEL like something’s pushing me home. Yeah, part of it is from, like, conscience obviously, like I told you. But… ‘nother part is a weird small _desire_ to go back through the portal, and back to what I know. Like, a want, a need, to go back to OUR Earth. Our familiar world.”

Pearl recoils back and looks away, with a finger onto her lips. She swallowed. “You feel it too?” Pearl asks, trying to conceal her worry.

“Yeah.” Amethyst’s answer is quiet and creaky.

Pearl frowns. She brings herself up to the edge of her seat, bringing her finger and thumb to her chin and looking downwards. “What do you propose this might be?” she questions. Might as well try and seek some answers while they’re at it. Though she can’t help being on edge.

Amethyst takes a long breath. “I think this place right here is supposed to fun for all of us, no matter which world we come from. But it’s like… we can’t get used to staying here and we gotta go to our own home eventually. Like it’s made so that it’s… fun, but that it’s not gonna be fun for long and we gotta go back home.”

Pearl moves to rest her elbow on her thigh and lean her chin against her fist. “Are you suggesting that this world is somehow designed to only provide _temporary_ comfort, and we cannot stay permanently even if we wanted to?”

“ _Something’s_ probably ‘designed’ that way, that’s for sure. But the thing is, I just ‘feel’ a want to… The _familiar_? Like a big sign within… yourself, your ‘subconscious,’ that’s eventually gonna tell you: fun’s over, now go home and go back to what you kinda already know.”

Pearl intertwined her fingers, leaving the index fingers straightened out, and brings them close to her face. “Strange…” she remarks. The Room feels silent yet again, almost suffocatingly this time.

“So… Yeah,” Amethyst concludes half-heartedly a minute later. “As fun as this place is, it’s _really_ not meant to be home for some reason. No matter what, this is never gonna be home for anyone who comes here. No way, no how. The end.”

Yet another pause. Pearl leans back in exasperation over the puzzling nature of this phenomenon. She begins to twiddle her fingers again, and frowns. “But now the question would have to be why. Why are we feeling this way?”

Amethyst simply shakes her head in an expression of utter confusion. Pearl sighs, while Amethyst looks up. For a few seconds, Pearl has to feel impressed on how Amethyst was able to describe these feelings much better than she could have, but she’s still concerned over what this could possibly mean for them. It feels restrictive not knowing what exactly is happening and how they are affected. All she knows is that she doesn’t know. But she believes that she needs to know somehow. It was only _natural_ that even a Gem like her would seek discovery and understanding of this particular unknown. She wouldn’t necessarily enjoy it, like all knowledge, but seeking the concrete answer would have to be worth all the trouble… Right?

A knock above brings them both out of their concerned musings. Pearl is almost startled at the sudden noise, until she looks up and sees Penny shyly leaning down into the Room.

“Um, excuse me?” she asks. “Pearl? Didn’t mean to interrupt anything, but I think Anais is looking for you! If you would come up…?”

Pearl gasps. “Oh, uh, sure!” She springs up from her seat and dusts herself off. “I’ll be right there!” Pearl silently chastises herself for having actually forgotten about the lessons. She’s kept those ‘students’ waiting long enough already, they’re probably a bit annoyed. She looks back at Amethyst, who decides to stretch her arms and snooze off right then and there. Pearl doesn’t feel annoyed by this, so she simply gives her a tiny smile, and lets her relax. All that speculation will have to wait.

Penny gets out of the way to allow Pearl to jump up the door and back into the Gym Room. She looks to her side to see Steven still coaching some very exhausted-looking Mordecai and Rigby at the cycles, not noticing her come in. The Statue Room’s door is open, and Pearl finds Penny inside pointing to the half-open door of the Instrument Room. Pearl works ahead in sprinting to the door and calmly opening it. She sees all the instrument players looking at her direction.

“Hello, everyone,” she announced. “I’m terribly sorry I took this long!”

“Don’t worry,” assures Anais. “We just wanted to show you something.” She points to Pops.

“Missus and Mister Watterson and I are going to play a song now. We arranged it so that you can play with us when you notice the pattern.” Pops chirps. “Are you ready, children?” He giggles childishly. Pearl tilts her head.

“Yeah!” shouts Darwin, and starts to count down MORE quietly, gesturing to Anais. He counts in a gentler voice. “One-and, two-and, three-and, four-and.”

[Anais begins to play a simple melody in C Major. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E3znZoFnN8)It isn’t say, Chopin, of course, but it is pleasant enough. Quite nice and pretty, and it brings a warm smile to Pearl’s face. Though, very pretty and cute, this melody only lasts for 20 seconds.

Anais now begins to play a similar melody, but with more strength in her input and an increased tempo. Pops then plays the same melody an octave lower, then soon adds a strong harmony to it as Anais plays and Darwin hits the drums with his fins. Pearl is almost positively ecstatic to hear these wonderful sounds coming from these strange beings. Their grasp at theory is remarkably competent, even from coming from a different world… It soon becomes apparent that Anais, Pops, and Darwin, are playing the same melody, with some degree of variation. The sound can be described as fairly adorable and charming to Pearl. Penny opens the door, steps in, and starts listening as well, with a look of joy in her face, already immersed in the music.

She decides that she should get involved in the next verse coming. She picks up a viola and adjusts it as quickly as the instrument would allow her, but it luckily remains in near-perfect condition. Her cue is almost there. She begins to play. A solo rendition of Anais’s original piano melody, with all the string chords adding a flair of drama and lightness, in her opinion. She plays four stanzas, eyes closed and focused on the melody, but she doesn’t stop there. After the fourth, Pearl increases the tone of the melody, adding a new feel to the song. She plays on, focused on the tone and emotion.

Pearl abruptly stops and allows Anais and the others to resume the original melody. At this point, the door through the Statue Room opens again, and Steven peeks in himself. The look on his face almost mirrors that of Penny, but with stars in his eyes and a widening grin. He and Penny are now fully inside the Room, listening to the band play. The door opens yet again, and Mordecai and Rigby, with towels over their necks, try their best to smile despite their exhaustion. The door from the ceiling opens as well, this time, Gumball and Skips curiously peek inside. Lion sniffs through the door and Garnet simply stands up and looks down the hole with a tiny smile in an otherwise unreadable expression.

Pearl once again decides to play her flair of a string rendition again. She once changes the tone to higher notes, before going back again to repeat it, much to the amazement of almost everyone. Soon, after the second change of tone she starts to add a dramatic crescendo. Higher and higher in each stanza. Goosebumps-inducing to their audience as the tone becomes much more dramatic each high note for a climatic rise.

The door on the floor opens as the string climaxes to very high notes in the end. Pops assists her with the cello at this point. She concludes the climatic with three notes from the original tone with Anais’s addition. Finally she allows Anais, Darwin, and Pops to continue the original melody again. The audience begins to murmur to themselves, praising their work, though they still quiet enough to appreciate the performance. During this point, Pearl manages to look back down at the half-open door floor to see Amethyst, wide-eyed in barely controlled awe. Pearl nods at her, and prepares a final set of strings.

By herself, Pearl conducts a long line of Anais’s melody for the final 35 seconds. In this final solo, she chooses not to add a crescendo or a rise in tone this time, and allows herself to play the nice melody to send off the song. From the beginning of this, she counts until 16 after each loop of the stanza as she steadily approaches the final tonic note to cap off the song. Finally, she ended abruptly at a strong C.

The whole room is met with strong applause from those who entered and stood watching. Steven, Penny, and Gumball are whooping cheers from the two angles, while the others clap in satisfaction. Pearl sees Anais, Darwin, and Pops stand up from their positions to take a bow, and she jumps back, almost immediately following suit upon realizing she was blushing in sheer flattery of everything. She made sure that her bow was as elegant as she can from the rather brief embarrassing display.

“Oh, ha, ha, thank you!” she exclaims. “Thank you all!”

Amethyst opens the ground door fully, then leans against the edge of the hole and gives Pearl a casual thumbs-up, a small smile, and a wink. Pearl smiles back and makes a blush sticker. Before she lets Amethyst see it, she heads over to Anais’s side again and grins proudly at her.

“Good job, Anais!” she praises, then turns to Darwin and Pops. “You all did a very fantastic job!” Pearl turns back to Anais. “That was incredible. I’m very proud of you!”

Anais produces a proud, happy smile and beams up at Pearl. Thoughts proceed to swim within her Gem. Where are her parents again…?

“Hey, Darwin!” Gumball leans in further into the Room from the ceiling door. “How about we play drums at the SpooOOOOOAH-!” Gumball suddenly slips from the ledge, and falls onto the Room. Amethyst’s pupils shrink when she sees the cat coming down at her, and drops down back into the Room below.

But before he can crash on to Amethyst and fall down the Room below, Pearl catches him in her arms, then rights his body in a cradle hold. He instinctively curls up in her surprisingly gentle hold. Upon realizing where he is, he yelps in embarrassment and wriggles himself off, running between Steven, Penny, Mordecai, and Rigby into the statue Room in an attempt to hide. Amidst the others’ gasps and murmurs, Pearl soon immediately blushes profusely.

Then, much to everyone’s alarm, the lights begin to flicker.

The lights still function perfectly, but the entire Room, if not the whole building, is plunged into shocking silence. Everyone looks upward in subtle fear, and everything else that happened before is completely ignored. Upon the others’ worry, Garnet purposefully drops down from the ceiling door, and lands with her feet planted firmly on the sides of the hole in the floor.

“Alright, nothing to worry about,” Garnet assures firmly and stoically. “Someone went through the portals, that’s all.”

Pearl looks at Garnet, who then nods at her. “Oh!” Pearl raises a finger. “Don’t worry, I’ll go check to see who came here! I’ll be right back.” Garnet allows her to leap up to the Room above, while the rest watch her leave. Pearl quickly hops from Room, to Room in a rapid. She hops from each story to story  until she reaches the 36th floor. Finally stopping, she then rights her body and begins to hum the melody she just played. She heads out of the remaining Rooms of the floor, exiting through the door in the hallway. She finally walks over and approaches the door to the Portal Room.

She steps in and opens it for the newcomer. Pearl tilts her head at the familiar face, carrying something unfamiliar.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, now a serious announcement. Starting tomorrow, June 1st to about June 12th, I will be on vacation in ITALY. That means I don't know if between those days I can continue on chapter 11 and much less be online. But I'll see what I can.


	11. Relativity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took too long for a chapter that's under half the length of the previous one. Quite an act to live up to. I'll let you decide if this one's still decent.

There’s simply no other way to describe it other than… incredible beyond belief. That was redundant, she knows, but what else can she actually say? She’s honestly speechless. She was really creeped out when she saw the portal. It just looked so WEIRD and way too out of place, even by Gem standards. There was just no way this was a Gem thing. It’s too otherworldly. Too… she doesn’t even know the word at this point.

But Connie decides that she needs to figure it out after the Crystal Gems jumped in. She WAS going to show them this strange black turtle she found at the beach, too.

Connie holds the little creature in her hands, kneeling against the floor of the Portal Room. All she can do is sit there, gently stroking the little turtle, as she tries to take in her alien surroundings of the Room, occasionally looking back at the portal she came from, as well as the other ones. Connie sighs, breathing in the strange air, not much different, but everything still felt unknown to her human senses. Later, she decides to try and stand up, and try to analyze the situation the best she can. 

Now on her feet, Connie looks back at the other portals on the Room. She walks up to the one next to it, and carefully extends her hand. To her mild surprise, she seems to feel some kind of invisible wall. She presses harder and lightly bangs onto the obstruction hoping to gain an entrance, to no avail. Connie rubs her chin and turns away from the portal, wondering why she couldn’t enter the others. Ignoring that train of thought for one moment, she decides to take another closer look at the turtle.

Now that she thinks about it, it seems even weirder than when she first saw it. She knew she shouldn’t normally tamper with wildlife like this, but she thought it was some kind of Gem monster of sorts because it didn’t look like a normal animal. Now she realizes it’s not even that. She looks at its little eyes when it looks back at her. Its tiny, pinprick, little blue-ish bullseye eyes…

Connie hears the door in front of her opening and briefly jumps. She gets ready to run back into the portal, until she sees just what is opening the door. Something much more familiar.

“Pearl!” Connie exclaims and approaches her. Connie saw how a tad confused Pearl seems to find her here. “Hey—!” Connie tries to think of something to say, but she doesn’t know where to start.

“Oh, hello, Connie!” Pearl greeted her as if she hadn’t seen her in about a day or so. “Everything good?”

Connie thinks for a moment, then continues to put on a smile. “Yeah! Everything’s… alright.” She didn’t mean to come off as being suspicious, but she can’t help but find confusion. Pearl also stares in a bit of confusion herself, before immediately correcting herself.

“Oh, right!” Pearl puts her hand on her cheek and chuckles. “You must be looking for the others! They’re somewhere in these Rooms below, come with me and I’ll explain further.” Pearl takes Connie’s shoulder and begins to lead her away from the Portal Room. “I apologize for our absence.”

Absence? Connie didn’t understand, but cannot seem to get the question out of her mouth, and remains silent. They start to walk through the door of the Room, and both Connie and the turtle look back at the portal as they leave the Room with Pearl. Pearl takes her back into the hallway, and proceeds to try and explain where exactly Connie is. Connie listens on to all the talk about multiple universes and the “world” all of these different people ended up in with baffled attention, though she finds herself distracted once Pearl opens the first door to the left to show her the tower’s functions. She proceeds to bask in at the sight of the Dance Room, observing its contrast to the rest of the building.

Pearl notices Connie’s curious enthusiasm. “Oh, but there’s so much more!” she exclaims, pointing towards a trapdoor in the center of the Room. “Go ahead and open that.” Connie blinks at Pearl, then walks over to the trapdoor and gets on her knees. With the turtle in one hand, she reaches down with the other to slowly pull the door open, leaning down further to take a look in the hole… 

“Wo-O-AH!” Connie feels herself being pulled forward when she looks down to the Room below. She begins to fall down through the hole, the turtle still gripped in her hands. Soon, she feels herself slowing down, until she almost seems to float. Rows of colors from the different lights of the Rooms filled her vision in an incredible stimuli, entrancing herself with the sights of this strange alien reality. She doesn’t notice Pearl gently leading her to different horizontal Rooms so Connie will end up where she needs to be. For each Room, Connie’s eyes fill with stars and diamonds, basking in at her surroundings.

Occasionally, the turtle also stares at its surroundings with close attention.

Before long, Connie stops her strange descent, finding herself being held by the shoulders so she wouldn’t fall over. She finds herself at one single Room, the Game Room, a Room filled with tables and traditional games. Connie starts to pant heavily while Pearl holds her up. She grins widely in bliss and amazement.

“Oh, my gosh!” she says breathlessly. “O-oh, my. I… I can’t believe any of this!” She takes a deep breath. “ _ Wow _ . I-I need to see more.”

“Believe me, Connie,” Pearl says with a smile. “I couldn’t believe it either. Welcome to another world.”

Connie allows her human mind to try and process everything, the best it can. It’s a lot to take in. Looking at the assortment of games, Connie understands that quite a lot of stuff was familiar to her, and yet, it wasn’t quite the same. As if the things she sees here are trying to imitate what she already knows, but can’t make an exact copy of what her own personal reality is composed of. Considering Pearl’s explanation, everything she sees feels as if it were trying to be… extra-universal, for lack of a better term. Still, it’s amazing to her. She only hopes to know more. She looks to her left at one of the door, and to her surprise, finds a silhouette of a… someone peeking inside.

“Um…” Connie points to Pearl the direction she saw the silhouette. “What’s that?”

“Oh! That’s just Gumball Watterson. He’s one of our otherworldly guests in this place.” Before Pearl could explain who “Gumball” was, he retreated back into the Room behind the door, leaving Connie confused.

“Hey!” Connie hears a definitely familiar voice coming from her right. She gasps and turns her head to greet the sound she recognizes from everything else with clarity. “Steven!”

From one of the doors, Steven steps into the Room. “Connie!” He exclaims in glee and waves at her. He starts running up to her to greet her. “Hi! Welcome to… this place!” Steven tries to present with his arms. “Pretty cool, right? What brings you here?”

Connie giggles. “Well, at first I actually wanted to show you this.” She presents the turtle to Steven and Pearl. “I don’t know where it comes from, and I was wondering if anyone knew what it is…”

Steven stares at the turtle curiously, while Pearl frowned as she observes it more closely. “Hm…” Pearl rubs her chin. “No… I don’t recall this creature from anywhere,” she states quietly. “I know it’s a… turtle, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before.”

Connie and Steven begin to look at it pensively, as it stares them all back with its glowing little eyes. Connie mumbles “Then… what could it be…” 

“ _ Well _ ,” Connie hears a much more unfamiliar voice from behind her. Both she and Steven turned to the door where Connie previously saw the person. This time, they were in full view; a blue cat with a big head leaning against the doorframe. “That’s pretty friendly of you two. You know Steven, if you wanted to arrange double ‘playdates’ or something, you could’ve just asked.”

Connie gasps in shock. “You… you’re a cat!” She points at him, with diamonds in her eyes.

Gumball stands up straight and casually examines his body. “… So?” He starts approaching the two. “Well, not that you hang out much in other nearly incomprehensible dimensions who-knows-how far away from your home.” He shows her his hand for a handshake. “Anyway, Gumball Watterson. Now with less screaming at the moment.”

Connie takes a second to look at Gumball’s cat hand, before taking it and shaking it lightly. “W-wow, nice to meet you Gumball.”

Gumball’s vision darts down to Connie’s other hand, carrying the black turtle. He gasps and pulls his hand away. Connie looks at him in worry when his eyes instantly widen, his pupils shrink, and his eyebrows curl into a panicked frown.

“Um… t-this thing isn’t… bitey, evilly, spawny, devily?” he asks nervously through his teeth. “C-cause I don’t have good experiences with these things…”

“Oh, um,” Connie quickly went back to holding the turtle with both her hands. “I just found it… I’m not sure what it is. Buuuut it looks harmless enough.” Connie tries to comfort Gumball by bringing the turtle close to him. He just shrinks further into his sweater until his eyeballs are visible. Connie pulls the turtle away and looks back at Steven, who just shrugs.

After a few moments, Gumball strains to bring his head out of his sweater, then sighs and facepalms. “Great, I just blew it.”

“You did okay, Gumball!” Penny shouts from the door. 

Connie turns to it and almosts gasps again, stumbling back upon seeing a  _ glowing _ fairy creature at the door. “Wow!” she exclaims in amazement, and laughs once Penny walks closer to greet the new visitor.

“Hi, there,” Penny greets politely and holds out her own hand, “I’m Penny Fitzgerald, good to meet you!” Connie excitedly shakes Penny’s hand, but Penny looks closer at Connie’s face, and tilts her head. “Um… do your glasses not have lenses?” she notes.

“… It’s a long story,” Connie says offhandedly while she takes off her glasses to demonstrate.

Within minutes, Steven giggles, and takes the chance to pull Gumball forward towards two girls, pulling everyone in a group hug.

“Everything’s really different here, it’s so cool!” Connie says.

“So  _ weird _ !” Gumball remarks in a startled tone.

“ _ Kinda _ weird…” Penny agrees. 

“… It’s  _ weirdly _ cool!” Connie improvises.

“That’s the spirit!” Steven tells her, giving her a thumbs up. Slowly, and barring some of Gumball’s eyerolls, Penny began to giggle. Soon enough, the kids started to giggle to themselves, and Pearl smiles in amusement at the scene. A minute later Amethyst is peeks down from the ceiling door, with Garnet behind her.

“Um…” Gumball stops laughing, and points at Connie’s turtle again. “Seriously, what’s up with that?”

Connie nods understandingly, and breaks away the group hug. “Okay, let me explain…” Connie clears her throat, while holding the turtle close. “I found this turtle at the beach, so I came to the temple to show it to you guys. The door was open, so I let myself in. Then, I found you guys entering some kind of portal. I waited for a while, until I decided to go in too because I wondered what was going on.”

Connie stops once she sees Steven beginning to stare at her in worried confusion as she was telling him. Pearl soon follows suit, as well as the Gems up in the ceiling. Gumball and Penny dart eyes to each other.

“Wait…” Steven asks slowly. “ _ When _ was that…?”

Connie soon gets confused herself. “… Um… Just now? About a minute ago…?” 

Steven opens his mouth, but no words come out. His inhale almost comes out as a gasp. He turns to Pearl with a look of uncertain bafflement, and she looks at him with confused worry. Amethyst widens her eyes and raises an eyebrow. Gumball stares awkwardly, and starts to point at the Gems.

“You guys don’t think…” he begins to ask in a low voice.

“But we’ve been here for a day!” Penny shouts rashly.

“WHAT??” Connie shouts back, and turns to Steven. “A  _ day _ ?”

“Yes!” Steven replies quickly. “I-it felt like a day!”

Connie shakes her head. “But then how…? 

“Whoa, whoawhoa hold UP!” Gumball begins to get frustrated and steps forward. “Can we, can we discuss this? It’s pretty obvious that TIME works differently here! Don’t you think? So maybe…” he begins to calm down and starts gesturing with his fingers, trying to calculate. “Uh… Time moves a LOT slower here, than it does in our worlds.” As Gumball explains, Anais and Darwin begin to peek from the door he and Penny previously entered.

Steven thinks for a few moments, then begins to smile nervously and scratches the back of his head. “Oh… wow… I can’t believe it took us this long to realize that! It’s so obvious!” He shrugs. Gumball sighs.

“How long, though?” Amethyst asks from the ceiling door, startling Connie for a second. “You said it was like a minute back home, and we were a day here… what’s that mean?”

Pearl joins her hands with her index fingers sticking out, and hums to herself. But before she could say anything, Anais enters the Room to interject (Connie tries to contain her excited gasps upon seeing the bunny). 

“So a minute would roughly equal a day back on your Earth…” Anais counts with her fingers. “2 days here would be 2 minutes. A week would be 7 minutes, a month would almost be half an hour, and a year would be… 6 hours.” 

Gumball lets out a loud sigh and sits on one of the chairs. “Oh, good, MATH,” he grits through his teeth. “THAT’S interesting, sis.”

“And these are just estimates,” Anais snarks at him. “Imagine if I had more precise information.”

Pearl takes a breath. “Right.” She points at Anais, and looks up to the other Gems. “What she summed up.” 

“Wow…” Steven and Connie both exclaim while looking at each other.

“That’s the equivalent in our universe,” Garnet states from above out loud, before entering the Game Room herself surprisingly quietly. “The animal children would have to guess how it applies to theirs.”

Darwin couldn’t help but snicker bashfully a bit, while Anais clears her throat. “Well, considering our mom hasn’t come for us by now and later grounded us in what’s the equivalent of about 28 years here…” Anais says, “I think it’s safe to say it applies to our world too.”

“Oh, so no worries!” Gumball sighs in relief and chuckles.

“Then it probably applies to the other guys’ worlds too,” Penny observes. Within a minute, she calls out. “HEY, MORDECAI! RIGBY! We have some news!”

Connie raises an eyebrow. “Mordecai and Rigb-? WOAH!” She feels the ground beneath her open up, not realizing she was standing in the ground door. She quickly jumps forward, and finds a  _ beaked _ face and a… raccoon thing peeking out from underneath. Connie makes a startled yelp.

“What’s up?” Mordecai asks Penny, before taking a second to look at the new guest. “… Oh, hey.” 

Connie almost didn’t respond, but eventually waved at him. “Um, hi there.”

Rigby turned to Mordecai. “How many more are gotta get in, Mordecai? Because I am NOT looking forward to more janitor hotel employee duty!” he complains.

“Yeah…” Mordecai replies, resting his forearms (wings?) on the floor under the door. “Besides, Benson’s gotta be pretty pissed by now for  _ disappearing _ for a day and all,” he says out loud for the others in the Room to hear, “So I think we better get going.”

“Um, yeah, about that…” Penny begins to say with a sincere smile on her face.

“You guys can stay here as long as you want!” Amethyst interjects joyfully. “No one even knows you’re gone!”

Mordecai’s pupils shrink in surprise. “Woah, a―” He then frowns playfully. “Naw… you can’t be serious!”

Connie put a hand on her cheek. “Well… when did you guys come here?” she asks them, still somewhat stunned.

“Oh, we were in our lunch break!” Rigby answers.

“Yeah, a half hour one…” Mordecai says in discomfort.

Penny smiles widely, while Connie continues. “Well, now you guys can spend your lunch break here, for about a month! And once you come back to work, it’ll be like you were never gone.”

The two now stare at Connie with eyes the size of white oranges. After a moment Rigby shoots Mordecai a wide grin. “Month of lunch break, duuuude!”

Soon, both of them are hollering. “ **WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!** ” The laugh and jump up to enter the Room. Connie steps back in awe in seeing just how tall the bird actually is, and watches them speed to one of the tables to look for games to play.

“I’m Connie, by the way!” she shouts at them, though in a polite manner and not in anger.

“So…” Steven says to the Gems as he watches the two browse through the collection of board games, yelling at each other while they take off on a table with what appeared to be a checker board. “… What do we do now?” he asks curiously without apathy.

Amethyst jumps down into the Room. The Crystal Gems now all look at each other. “I don’t know…” Pearl said. “It doesn’t seem to have a lasting impact, but a lot can happen in even a few minutes if we decide to stay here for days.”

The Gems remain quiet, and Connie takes the chance to come closer. Gumball drums his fingers on the table, while his siblings decide to sit in the same table with him and Penny. Darwin took the time to eye some of the games available, trying to pick one.

“Hey…” Amethyst speaks up, though quietly. “We could stay here, until we feel like we HAVE to go home! Remember what we talked about a while ago, Pearl? That we can’t actually stay here forever even if you want to?”

Pearl looks at Amethyst with sparked interest and raised expression. “So in that case… we can stay here until we absolutely need to go back… and we’ll know it when we feel it.” She turned to Garnet, hopefully knowing what they were talking about. Garnet thinks for several moments, before nodding understandingly.

“It’s alright, I feel it too,” Garnet assures. “We’ll know when we have to go home. Until then, our worlds shouldn’t be too affected by our absence.” She adjusts her glasses.

“So…” Steven says, not quite understanding everything. “Can we stay?” he asks with anticipation.

Garnet leans down on him and gives him a small smirk. “For as long as you feel. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Before long, Steven has stars on his eyes and sports a huge smile. He turns towards a cautiously idealistic Connie, and goes to her with all smiles and hope. “Connie, this is gonna be great!” he reassures her. “We can stay here for as long as we want! This dimension is amazing and strange and we’re all having a lot of fun here. It’s like you said, it’s weirdly cool! C’mon, Connie, we don’t get another chance like this everyday. We gotta make this day outside back on Earth count! I promise you won’t regret it!”

Hearing Steven’s words, Connie can feel curious excitement flutter inside her. She begins to smile, her mind consuming with wonder.“Okay, I’ll stay too,” she tells him with a smile.

“Yay!” Steven cheers. Soon enough, Connie and Steven run to the table where Gumball is, and the other Gems depart. Meanwhile, Darwin finds a game of Monopoly and he and Anais set it up. The kids start to pick the metal pieces for their game as they set up the session. Steven and Connie run to sit on the table alongside them in time. “Hey guys!” Steven shouts. “We have a sixth player now!”

Gumball cocks an eyebrow. “Alright… cool!” Gumball gives them a thumbs up with the racecar piece still in his hand, then turns to Penny. “Not quite my idea of a double playdate, but that should do for now…” he tells her quietly.

Penny giggles silently while twirling the thimble piece in her hand, then winks at him. “Oh, they’ll know sooner or later,” she remarks, watching Steven and Connie picking out pieces together for their game. The two pick the iron and a shoe, while Darwin and Anais hold the little dog and the battleship. 

Steven and Connie take one last look at all the doors in the Room, the curious things they’ve seen, the strange potential of this reality, then at each other. All six kids begin to play, entertaining themselves with this game, that somehow reminded them of their worlds’ counterparts’ game. The same kind of mimicking familiarity that Connie had felt earlier about the tower, and the ‘extra-universal’ quality of it. Strange, but fantastic.

The turtle is set aside at the corner of the table. It crawls onto the game board set and begins to nibble on the top hat piece.


End file.
